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UBRARV 

UNWERSITV  OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Photograph  copi/righf,  hi/  Frederick  Ho//i/er,  London 


SWINBURNE 

BY 
GEORGE  EDWARD  WOODBERRY 


Contemporary 


Men  of  Letters 


NEW  YORK 

McCLURE,  PHILLIPS  &  CO. 

MCMV 


Copyright,  1905,  by 
McCLURE,   PHILLIPS  &  CO. 
Published,  November,  1905  N 


The  author  makes  grateful  acknowledg- 
ment to  Messrs  Harper  &  Brothers  for  their 
permission  to  use  the  text  of  the  authorized 
American  edition  of  Mr.  Swinburne's  poems 
published  by  them. 


ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 


I 

Algernon  Charles  Swinburne,  sprung  of 
the  strength  of  English  blood,  was  born  in 
London,  April  5,  1837,  the  eldest  son  of 
Admiral  Charles  Henry  Swinburne,  and 
Lady  Jane  Henrietta,  daughter  of  the  third 
earl  of  Ashburnham.  His  childhood  was 
summered  in  Northumberland  and  win- 
tered in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  so  that  the  an- 
cestry of  his  senses  as  well  as  of  his  blood 
was  of  the  sea.  He  was  bred  at  Eton  and 
Oxford,  where  though  not  undistinguish- 
ed in  scholarship  he  took  no  degree.  He 
became  acquainted  with  Italy  and  France 

[3] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
by  travel.  From  his  boyhood  and  in  college 
days  he  was  devoted  to  the  literary  life, 
and  thereafter  literature  was  his  sole  ca- 
reer. A  life  secluded  in  friendships  and 
studies  has  been  his  portion,  as  a  man; 
and  the  fruits  of  it,  by  which  he  lives  to 
the  public,  are  an  abundance  of  prose  and 
verse  which  has  come  forth  unintermit- 
tently  for  nearly  forty  years ;  he  stands  now 
alone,  the  last  of  the  great  English  poets  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  with  a  fame  never 
to  be  forgotten  in  the  annals  of  that  time 
thronged  though  it  be  with  poetic  names 
and  voices  of  matchless  splendor  and  music. 

II 

The  gift  of  Swinburne  is  to  be  capable  of 
passion.  Enthusiasm  is  inseparable  from 

[4] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
him.  Perhaps  the  simplest  aspect  of  his  gen- 
ius hes  in  his  revolutionary  songs.  The  old 
French  fire  burns  its  last  in  his  torch.  It  is 
the  flame  that  descended  for  an  hour  upon 
Coleridge,  that  wrapped  Shelley  life-long 
and  in  death,  that  by  tradition  now  belongs 
to  the  English  race  of  poets  from  Milton  to 
Landor  with  every  well-loved  name  to  aid; 
and  in  his  generation  Swinburne  will  ever 
be  remembered  as  its  herald,  a  figure  sole 
and  supereminent,  the  poet-republican 

"7  am  the  trumpet  at  thy  lips,  thy  clarion 
Full  of   thy  cry,  sonorous  with  thy  breath,"  — 

that  is  his  attitude,  in  the  modern  battle 
for  liberty,  like  Taillefer  at  Hastings.  It 
began  with  his  songs  for  Italy,  in  the  great 
days  of  her  patriots,  the  first-fruits  of  his 

[5] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
sympathies  with  the  land  and  of  his  per- 
sonal admiration  for  Mazzini.  He  does  not 
state  the  grounds  of  his  faith,  for  it  is  not 
an  intellectual  passion  that  seizes  on  him; 
it  is  a  fervour  that  burns,  an  exaltation  that 
lifts  and  heightens,  a  flood  of  feeling  that 
pours  forth  and  inundates  with  light  and 
music  and  with  the  confluence  of  many 
strengths  in  one  superb  moral  force  —  the 
revolutionary  cause.  Its  monotone,  though 
in  part  due  to  the  quality  of  the  resonance 
and  to  the  sameness  of  the  imagery,  is  es- 
sentially emotional,  the  monotone  of  pro- 
found and  unchangeable  depth  in  the  feel- 
ing itself  which  is  a  constituent  of  the  eternal 
nature  of  man.  The  passion  is  a  capacity  to 
hate  as  well  as  to  love.  There  is  no  such 
master  of  the  curse,  in  modern  days.  He 

[6] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
strikes  home  and  to  the  pit  with  it,  and 
with  a  mien  and  phrase  and  a  volleying 
after  of  fire  and  wrath  fit  to  hurl  Satan 
down  to  the  abyss.  These  are  curses  to 
rejoice  the  heart.  They  mark  their  vic- 
tims indelibly  for  hell.  Vice  versa  his 
hymns  to  Landor,  Victor  Hugo  and  Maz- 
zini  are  adorations.  These  three  were  the 
living  hands  that  had  fed  him  in  youth 
with  their  touch,  their  words,  their  pres- 
ence on  earth.  The  fire  they  nursed 
though  they  did  not  kindle,  had  long  life 
in  it,  a  deep  core  of  heat ;  and  whether  the 
year  was  '66  or  yesterday,  whether  the 
scene  was  Rome  or  Paris,  Crete  or  Mus- 
covy, the  poet  still  brooded  there  the  pas- 
sion-bolts of  his  invective  or  paeans  for 
victor  and  martyr.  In  his  own  land  Swin- 

•    [7] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
burne's  revolutionary  ardour  changed  and 
took  a  new  form  in  an  illimitable  patriot- 
ism, a  pride  in  England,  an  Elizabethan 
might  of  land-love  that  carried  the  fate  of 
the  Armada  in  its  bosom  as  its  dearest 
memory  and  expressed  itself  in  an  exu- 
berance of  panegyric  and  delight  that 
makes  his  verse  seem  contemporaneous 
with  English  liberty  and  the  ocean-rhythm 
of  England's  empire.  This  love  of  liberty 
and  dedication  to  mankind  had,  too,  its 
far  fount,  under  dark  centuries,  in  Athens, 

"Dear  city  of  men  without  master  or  lord;  " 

thence  the  poet  had  drank,  most  truly,  the 
draught  of  his  inspiration,  the  intoxica- 
tion of  his  faith  in  man.  The  stream  of  his 
revolutionary  song  is  unmatched  in  vol- 

[8] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
ume,  splendour  and  force;  it  has  flowed 
life-long,  and  still  wells;  it  is  blended  of 
many  loves  of  persons  and  histories  and 
memories,  of  time  and  of  eternity;  it  is  a 
great  passion,  great  in  personal  intensity, 
great  in  its  human  outreaching  and  up- 
lifting aspiration,  great  in  sincerity.  Here 
is  immense  manhood-strength,  seeking,  by 
the  poet's  right,  to  pour  itself  through  the 
impoverished  veins  of  miserable  men." 

Ill 

Even  in  so  brief  an  opening  glance  at 
Swinburne's  work  the  fact  of  his  scholar- 
ship, his  provenience  from  literature, 
stands  prominently  forth.  I  suppose  that 
no  English  poet  has  ever  had  so  wide  and 
familiar  acquaintance  with  the  poetry  of 

[9] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
foreign  climes.  He  began  with  a  felicitous 
command  of  the  classical  and  romance 
languages.  He  took  the  Taylorian  prize, 
in  his  college  days,  for  French  and  Italian, 
and  won  other  similar  distinction  in  the 
ancient  tongues.  He  has  written,  as  a  poet, 
in  Greek,  Latin  and  French  with  literary 
mastery.  In  English  his  studies  have  been 
prolonged  and  comprehensive,  and  not  re- 
stricted to  poetry.  Out  of  this  varied 
scholarship  sprang  his  prose  works,  a  long 
series  beginning  with  his  elaborate  expo- 
sition of  Blake's  genius  and  including  for 
its  bulk  an  examination  of  the  Elizabethan 
drama,  together  with  the  study  of  Victor 
Hugo.  To  be  grouped  here,  also,  as  de- 
pendent on  the  critical  activity  of  his  mind 
are  the  poems  so  many  in  number  which, 

[10] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
whether  in  the  form  of  ode,  elegy  or  son- 
net, are  dedicated  to  the  Hterary  fame  of 
those  writers  whom  he  had  deeply  stud- 
ied. In  this  large  body  of  verse  his  criticism 
is  condensed  and,  so  far  as  the  matter 
permits,  is  put  into  the  form  of  poetry 
with  a  full  heart  of  praise.  He  indulges 
himself  in  this  luxury  of  praise,  in  a 
minute  and  lavish  tribute  to  the  writers  of 
many  books  and  plays,  to  the  nameless  as 
well  as  the  famous  dead.  Swinburne  truly 
is  nowhere  more  the  poet  than  in  this  in- 
exhaustible capacity  to  be  moved  to  hero- 
worship  and  the  affectionate  eulogy  of 
those  who  from  Sappho  and  Catullus 
down  the  long  line  seem  to  be  in  the  inti- 
macy of  genius  his  own.  His  criticism  is 
woven  of  such  noble  recognitions. 

[11] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
This  literary  element,  explicitly  exposed 
in  his  prose  criticism  and  in  the  critical  as 
distinguished  as  from  the  imaginative 
portions  of  his  verse,  is  implicitly  active  in 
the  whole  mass  of  his  poetry.  Its  influence 
is  observed  most  plainly  in  the  structural 
form  of  his  dramas.  He  had  achieved  such 
familiarity  with  past  literature  that  his 
mind  became  capable  of  an  attitude  of 
contemporaneity  toward  it;  he  was  thus 
led,  in  opposition  to  the  usual  attempt  of  a 
literary  poet  to  modernize  what  he  de- 
rives from  the  past  and  naturalize  it  in  his 
own  age,  rather  to  archaize  his  own  forms. 
Swinburne's  detachment  from  his  own 
time  was  gradual,  but  he  moved  toward  a 
reproduction  of  both  the  Greek  and  the 
English  antique.  "Atalanta  in  Calydon" 

[12] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
was  his  first  experiment  in  this  way,  but 
"  Erechtheus, "  his  second  Greek  play,  was 
more  perfect  in  the  success  that  it  aimed 
at.  Similarly  his  earliest  dramatic  work 
"The  Queen  Mother"  and  "Rosamond," 
though  Shaksperian  in  diction  and  remi- 
niscence, was  yet  not  a  conscious  reversion 
in  art;  but  the  play  of  "Locrine, "  and  the 
trilogy  of  "  Chastelard,"  "Bothwell"  and 
"Mary  Stuart,"  a  chronicle  history  as  he 
himself  describes  it,  were  attempts  to  write 
anew  in  the  Elizabethan  manner  of  the 
drama.  The  same  may  be  said  of  "Ma- 
rino Faliero, "  while  "The  Sisters"  and 
"Rosamund,  Queen  of  the  Lombards,"  the 
other  two  dramas,  stand  somewhat  apart. 
In  the  trilogy  of  which  Queen  Mary  is 
the  theme,  the  effort  for  contemporaneity 

[13] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
with  the  past  is  also  to  be  observed,  other 
than  artistically,  in  the  historical  veracity 
of  the  characters  in  themselves  and  of  the 
scene  of  events.  Attentive  and  exhaustive 
study  of  the  facts  of  the  record  is  notice- 
able, the  historian's  fidelity;  and  it  is 
rather  in  obedience  to  the  necessities  of 
history  than  of  art  that  the  poet  has 
swelled  and  lengthened  the  drama  to  such 
a  remarkable  compass,  and  owns  that 
the  work  has  such  proportions  and  has 
been  so  treated  as  to  deserve  the  name  of 
an  epic  drama.  He  seems  desirous  that  it 
should  be  judged  of  as  a  history  as  well  as 
in  its  aspect  as  a  work  of  imagination.  This 
indicates  the  depth  in  him  of  that  feeling 
for  past  fact,  which  has  controlled  the  ar- 
tistic form  of  the  drama  in  his  general  use, 

[14] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
both  Greek  and  English.  He  disengages 
himself  from  contemporary  realities  — 
standards,  ideas,  convictions  —  but  sub- 
jects himself  to  the  realities  of  another 
place  and  time  so  far  as  he  can  re-embody 
them ;  he  thus  by  native  aptitude  and  with 
the  aid  of  scholarship,  does  become  in  a 
singular  degree  a  citizen  and  freeman  of 
many  literatures  and  at  their  different 
periods,  a  poet  in  whom  what  would  be 
imitation  and  reminiscence  in  others  be- 
comes genuine  because  he  plays  the  part 
he  assumes  after  due  study  and  with  deep 
feeling;  he  thus  succeeds  beyond  all  others 
in  writing  literary  drama  that  accords  with 
past  principles  of  composition. 

Such  a  power  to  free  oneself  from  one's 
own  age  and  move  in  the  guise  and  fash- 

[15] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
ion  of  other  times  and  places,  illustrated 
here  by  the  use  Swinburne  makes  of  the 
drama,  involves  aloofness  from  the  world. 
He  is,  in  fact,  in  his  greater  work  of  the 
imagination,  remote  from  current  life.  He 
lives,  withdrawn  in  his  own  thoughts,  in 
that  sphere  of  the  poetic  imagination 
where  there  is  a  true  timelessness,  —  the 
solitude  thronged  with  figures  that  appear 
at  any  moment  from  any  age  and  drift 
across  the  vision  or  play  their  mimic  parts 
before  the  mind's  eye  and  disappear.  It  is 
the  world  of  the  great  artists.  Locrine, 
Erechtheus,  Meleager  are  natural  there; 
so  are  the  stormy  passion  of  the  Scotch 
peers,  the  craft  of  English  statesmen,  the 
spectacle  of  Venetian  pride;  or  Sappho  or 
Faustine.  The  world  of  Swinburne  is  well 

[16] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
symbolized  by  that  Zodiac  of  the  burning 
signs  of  love  that  he  named  in  the  prelude 
to  "Tristram  of  Lyonesse, " — the  signs 
of  Helen,  Hero,  Alcyone,  Iseult,  Rosa- 
mond, Dido,  Juliet,  Cleopatra,  Francesca, 
Thisbe,  Angelica,  Guenevere;  under  the 
heavens  of  these  starry  names  the  poet 
moves  in  his  place  apart  and  sees  his  vis- 
ions of  woe  and  wrath  and  weaves  his 
dream  of  the  loves  and  the  fates  of  men. 
He  is  a  myth-lover,  a  dreamer,  a  com- 
panion of  the  myths  and  the  dreams  of  the 
past,  an  artist  of  the  imagination.  The 
aloofness  that  belongs  to  Swinburne's 
verse  is  not  due  only  to  his  effort  to  arch- 
aize the  forms  of  his  art,  but  much  more 
to  the  fact  that  he  reverts  to  great  imagin- 
ative themes  which,   in  themselves,   are 

[17] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
remote  from  the  modern  world,  and  con- 
ceives them  in  a  spirit  of  poetry  that  now 
seems  to  have  its  death-Hmit  of  a  great 
age  in  his  sole  surviving  genius. 

The  artistic  conservatism  of  Swinburne, 
which  disposed  him  in  the  rigidity  of  his 
mind  to  the  preservation  and  choice  of 
anterior  poetic  forms,  and  to  the  treatment 
of  antique  and  legendary  themes  or  sub- 
jects of  historic  grandeur,  is  also  felt  in  his 
desire  that  these  themes  should  be  kept  in 
their  primitive  state.  He  revolted  against 
moderization  of  the  old  in  all  its  forms. 
The  dramatic  bent  of  his  own  genius  may 
have  predisposed  him  against  idyllic  treat- 
ment by  any  transforming  method;  but, 
apart  from  that,  there  was,  deep  in  his  na- 
ture, a  rooted  abhorrence  of  any  change  in 

[18] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
the  essentials  of  the  antique  or  mediaeval 
matter,  a  feeling  reflected  in  his  care  for 
the  accuracy  of  history  in  his  trilogy.  He 
was  a  purist,  in  opposition  to  his  contem- 
poraries. This  was  exemplified,  for  the 
Arthur  Myth,  in  "The  Tale  of  Balen," 
and  again  in  "Tristram  of  Lyonesse;"  he 
stood  for  the  mediaeval,  romantic  narra- 
tive in  the  one  case,  and  for  the  naked 
majesty  of  primitive  love  and  fate  in  the 
other.  There  is  a  truthfulness,  an  auster- 
ity of  truth,  in  all  this  which  is  tempera- 
mental in  the  poet  and  marks  the  strength 
of  his  individuality.  In  a  certain  way  there 
is  the  spirit  of  Pre-Raphaelitism  in  it,  a 
formal  reversion  to  severer  artistic  meth- 
ods, to  a  primitive  poetry,  to  a  more  stern 
and  bare  figure  of  life,  a  reversion  to  art  as 

[19] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
opposed  to  mere  manipulation  of  mater- 
ial, a  recognition  of  the  truth  that  the  great 
themes  of  imagination  are  given  to  man, 
not  created  by  him  in  any  passing  genera- 
tion, that  they  are  of  man  but  not  of  men. 
This  reverence  of  Swinburne  for  the  past, 
in  form  and  matter,  in  the  things  of  art,  is 
a  part  of  that  ritual  of  hero-worship  to 
which  he  gives  such  fervid  and  personal 
expression  and  which  is  summed  gener- 
ally throughout  his  verse  in  his  ever  re- 
curring hymn  to  Apollo,  to  the  Sun-god, 
the  inspiration  of  all  poetry.  The  poet's 
faith  is  in  this  past  of  art,  both  form  and 
matter  and  personality,  instrument  and 
theme  and  singer,  and  he  sustains  it 
against  the  temporal  hour  by  virtue  of  his 
own  enfranchisement  in  the  mind  from 

[20] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
time,  of  his  own  liberty  in  the  mastery  of 
many  Hteratures  and  epochs,  of  his  own 
contemporaneity  with  poetry  in  a  multi- 
tude of  its  forms  and  moods.  Swinburne's 
conservatism  is  one  with  his  hero-worship, 
one  with  his  scholarship,  one  with  his  life- 
long passion  for  literature,  a  poet's  pas- 
sion for  life  in  the  imaginative  world.  The 
love  of  literature,  a  scholar's  love,  is  the 
most  fundamental  thing  in  him ;  it  is  a  jeal- 
ous and  deep-hearted  love  and  controls 
him  in  his  theories  as  well  as  in  his  prac- 
tice, in  his  mental  outlook  as  well  as  in  his 
secret  inspiration;  it  may  make  him  aloof 
in  person,  remote  in  theme,  reversionary  in 
art,  but  it  gives  him  a  wide  domain.  The 
revolutionary  cause  even  was  for  him  a  lit- 
erary heirloom  from  the  poets.  Swinburne 

[21] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
is  a  poet  of  culture  through  whom  flows  the 
broad  stream  of  the  many  thoughts  of  men. 

IV 

Swinburne  first  took  the  world  with  mel- 
ody. The  opening  chorus  of  "Atalanta  in 
Calydon"  was,  in  the  ears  of  men,  a  new 
singing  voice  on  earth.  Its  music  stamps 
the  memory  of  whoever  hears  it  beyond 
any  possible  oblivion.  The  cadence  and 
the  phrase  are  both  characteristic  of  the 
poet's  original  genius,  and  so  is  their  in- 
separability; they  are  one  in  the  manifold 
of  their  syllables  and  they  flash  out  in 
their  fall  what  can  only  be  called  a  colour 
of  sound.  This  is  the  peculiar  and  arrest- 
ing poetic  gift  of  Swinburne,  the  lyrical 
iridescence  of  the  verse  like  a  mother-of- 

[22] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
pearl  sea,  like  a  green  wave  breaking  in 
tempest,  like  a  rainbow-spray  before  the 
beak  of  his  driving  song;  it  is  a  marvel 
that  changes  but  fails  not,  a  witchery  of 
language,  a  vocal  incantation  in  the 
rhymes,  an  enchantment  in  the  mere 
pour  of  sound  and  pause  and  elision, —  a 
purely  metrical  gift.  The  chorus  of  the 
"Atalanta"  serves  melodically  as  a  pre- 
lude to  all  this  lyrical  change,  just  as  it 
arises  most  spontaneously  in  the  memory, 
in  the  recall  of  his  music. 

"  When  the  hounds  of  spring  are  on  winter's  traces. 
The  mother  of  months  in  meadow  or  plain 

Fills  the  shadows  and  windy  places 

With  lisp  of  leaves  and  ripple  of  rain; 

And  the  brown  bright  nightingale  amorous 

Is  half  assuaged  for  Itylus, 

[23] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

For  the  Thracian  ships  and  the  foreign  faces. 
The  tongueless  vigil,  and  all  the  pain. 

Come  with  hows  bent  and  with  emptying  of  quivers. 
Maiden  most  perfect,  lady  of  light, 

With  a  noise  of  winds  and  many  rivers. 
With  a  clamour  of  waters,  and  with  might; 

Bind  on  thy  sandals,  O  thou  most  fleet. 

Over  the  splendour  and  speed  of  thy  feet; 

For  the  faint  east  quickens,  the  wan  west  shivers. 
Round  the  feet  of  the  day  and  the  feet  of  the  night. 

Where  shall  we  find  her,  how  shall  we  sing  to  her. 

Fold  our  hands  round  her  knees,  and  cling  ? 
O  that  man's  heart  were  as  fire  and  could  spring 
to  her. 
Fire,  or  the  strength  of  the  streams  that  spring  ! 
For  the  stars  and  the  winds  are  unto  her 
As  raiment,  as  songs  of  the  harp-player; 
For  the  risen  stars  and  the  fallen  cling  to  her. 
And    the    southwest-wind    and    the    west-wind 
sing. 

[24] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

For  winter  s  rains  and  ruins  are  over. 
And  all  the  season  of  snows  and  sins; 

The  days  dividing  lover  and  lover. 

The  light  that  loses,  the  night  that  wins; 

And  time  remembered  is  grief  forgotten. 

And  frosts  are  slain  and  flowers  begotten. 

And  in  green  underwood  and  cover 

Blossom  by  blossom  the  s'pring  begins. 

The  full  streams  feed  on  flower  of  rushes. 

Ripe  grasses  trammel  a  travelling  foot. 
The  faint  fresh  flame  of  the  young  year  flushes 

From  leaf  to  flower  and  flower  to  fruit; 
And  fruit  and  leaf  are  as  gold  and  fire. 
And  the  oat  is  heard  above  the  lyre. 
And  the  hoofed  heel  of  a  satyr  crushes 
The  chestnut-husk  at  the  chestnut-root. 

And  Pan  by  noon  and  Bacchus  by  night. 
Fleeter  of  foot  than  the  fleet-foot  kid. 

Follows  with  dancing  and  fills  with  delight 
The  Mcenad  and  the  Bassarid ; 

[25] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

And  soft  as  lips  that  laugh  and  hide 
The  laughing  leaves  of  the  tree  divide. 
And  screen  from  seeing  the  leave  in  sight 
The  god  pursuing,  the  maiden  hid. 

The  ivy  falls  with  the  BacchanaVs  hair 

Over  her  eyebrows  hiding  her  eyes; 
The  wild  vine  slipping  down  leaves  bare 

Her  bright  breast  shortening  into  sighs; 
The  wild  vine  slips  with  the  weight  of  its  leaves, 
But  the  berried  ivy  catches  and  cleaves 
To  the  limbs  that  glitter,  the  feet  that  scare 
The  wolf  that  follows,  the  fawn  that  flies" 

The  lyrical  vein  here  opened  disclosed 
richer  ores  in  the  succeeding  choruses  and 
antiphonal  arrangements  of  the  plays.  A 
new  master  of  song-craft  was  plain  to  see. 
But  there  was  that  in  the  Hellenism  of 
this  play  which  gave  the  quality  of  an 
exotic  to  the  verse,  which  shadowed  and 

[26] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
veiled  the  permanence  of  the  gift  and 
made  it  appear  more  magical  than  real. 
Its  reality  and  permanence  as  the  natural 
gift  of  an  English  poet  was  first  and  sur- 
prisingly established  in  men's  minds  by 
the  publication  of  the  first  series  of 
"Poems  and  Ballads"  from  which  Swin- 
burne's fame  properly  began.  Here  the 
lyrical  quality  was  pre-eminent,  greater  in 
range  and  variety  and  in  effect  than  in  any 
later  volume ;  here,  there,  were  not  only  the 
cadence  and  the  phrase,  the  flow,  the 
colour  of  sound,  the  intermingling  of 
musical  senses  with  the  whole  range  of 
emotion  and  thought,  but  such  delicacy 
and  litheness  and  volume  in  the  verses  as 
made  them  a  new  revelation  of  language 
as  a  medium  of  expression.  It  was  as  if  a 

[27] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
new  magical  art  had  arisen,  and  Swin- 
burne was  its  master.  The  verse  was  Uke 
sword-play,  for  brilliancy  and  precision, 
for  short  and  long,  for  speed  and  glitter 
and  nerve.  Familiarity  with  it  has  now 
lessened  the  pleasures  of  surprise  and 
wonder;  but  as  the  poet  has  gone  on 
through  later  years,  and  from  time  to 
time  has  put  forth  his  strength  in  novel 
ways,  he  has  maintained  and  increased 
his  early  fame  as  a  metrical  master  per- 
fecting a  native  gift  with  all  the  resources 
of  an  exact  and  subtle  scholarship  in  the 
resources  of  his  art,  its  aims  and  limits,  as 
a  form  of  music  in  words.  In  all  these 
things  he  is  accomplished. 

Perfect,  however,  in  metres,  he  is   less 
sensitive  to  purity  in  structural  form.  His 

[28] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWLNBURNE 
lyrics  are  apt  to  be  shortened  dramas,  his 
dramas  to  be  fragmentary  epics,  his  nar- 
rative to  be  a  blend  of  lyric  passion  and 
dramatic  episode.  "Tristram  of  Lyon- 
esse"  is  his  most  characteristic  poem  in 
this  respect  as  in  all  others ;  it  is  the  poem 
most  representative  of  his  qualities,  each 
at  its  best.  The  poet's  command  of  intel- 
lectual form,  of  the  proportion  of  matter 
to  expression,  of  the  economic  rendering 
of  character,  event  and  thought,  of  that 
logical  condensation  which  is  effected  by 
art,  is  less  manifest.  Form  in  all  its  modes, 
and  they  are  numerous,  is  essential  to  the 
greatest  poetry.  Swinburne  is  eminent  for 
metrical  form,  in  the  highest  degree;  and 
in  this  he  is  lyrically  unrivalled,  so  far  as 
the  form  only  is  concerned.  Of  form  in  its 

[29] 


GERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
structural  and  intellectual  modes  he  has 
less,  but  prefers  complexity  to  singleness 
and  an  ample  fullness  to  economy.  Blank 
verse  also  does  not  take  his  imprint  so 
sympathetically  as  the  lyrical  measures, 
though  as  studiously  laboured  as  his  rhym- 
ed and  lyric  lines ;  it  is  rather  by  the  mel- 
ody with  which  he  first  captured  men,  and 
by  no  other  equal  bond,  that  he  holds  the 
world  under  the  fascination  of  liquid  ca- 
dences and  light  lilts  and  choral  harmonies 
that  first  fell  on  human  speech  from  his  lips. 

V 

The  second  salient  trait  of  Swinburne's 
work,  and  one  not  less  impressive  and 
individualistic  than  his  lyricism,  is  its  ren- 
dering of  the  experience  of  passion.  The 

[30] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
theme  is  most  pervasive  in  his  earher 
verse,  and  is  there  so  frequent  and  takes 
on  so  many  forms  of  imagination  that  a 
misleading  idea  was  fixed  in  the  pubhc 
mind  of  the  narrowness  of  his  range  in 
poetry.  The  poetic  fiction  under  which  he 
develops  the  theme  is  multifold,  and  ex- 
hibits the  various  sources  of  his  culture ;  it 
has  three  main  phases,  classical,  mediae- 
val and  Pre-Raphaelite.  The  guise  of  Pre- 
Raphselitism  is  the  earliest  and  most  pal- 
pable in  the  verse,  and  the  fact  is  con- 
nected with  the  poet's  association  in  life 
with  the  group  of  artists,  Rossetti,  Morris, 
Burne-Jones  and  others,  with  whom  he 
had  come  in  contact  in  college  days  and 
later,  and  to  whose  art  in  painting  and 
cast  of  imagination  generally  Swinburne's 

[31] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
was  most  cognate.  His  mind  formed  the 
habit  of  allegorizing  in  human  figures  ab- 
stractions, such  as  Love,  Fear,  Grief,  and 
presenting  these  pictorially  and  symbolic- 
ally. They  are  figures  essentially  without 
the  motion  of  life,  designated  by  attributes 
of  colour  and  wreath  and  wand,  can- 
vases or  cameos  in  words;  the  poems  in 
which  they  are  the  human  element  of  in- 
terest are  also  highly  conventionalized  in 
their  literary  art,  generally  under  French 
or  Italian  influences.  Such  are  the  open- 
ing poems  of  his  work,  set  first  in  the  col- 
lected edition,  "A  Ballad  of  Life"  and  "A 
Ballad  of  Death."  The  initial  note  thus 
struck  often  recurs,  but  as  an  artistic  meth- 
od it  is  diminishingly  employed  by  the  poet 
in  the  progress  of  his  works.  The  classical 

[32] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
source  of  his  song  is  a  much  deeper  spring, 
and  from  the  moment  when  it  blends 
with  the  verse  Hfts  it  far  away  from  sesthet- 
icism,  conventionahzed  art  and  any  lim- 
itation of  narrow  modes,  peculiar  fashion 
and  formalism.  The  theme  at  once  takes 
its  great  form  as  that  of  the  everlasting 
opposition  inhuman  nature  which  is  histor- 
ically summed  up  as  the  antithesis  of  class- 
ical paganism  to  monkish  Christianity, 
or  more  broadly  as  the  contrast  of  the  bod- 
ily with  the  spiritual  element  in  life.  Swin- 
burne still  farther  defines  the  discord  as 
the  opposition  of  the  worship  of  Venus  to 
that  of  the  Virgin  Mary ;  and  thus  begins 
for  him  that  denial  of  Christian  symbol- 
ism which  he  carried  to  the  extreme  of  ex- 
pression in  the  poem  "Before  a  Crucifix. " 

[33] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
The  reversionary  instinct,  so  notice- 
able in  ail  his  art,  is  here  at  work  un- 
checked. He  seems,  like  another  Julian,  to 
bring  back  the  worship  of  the  Greek  di- 
vinities, affirming  their  permanence  es- 
sentially in  human  nature,  and  he  takes 
the  traditionary  dying  words  of  Julian  as 
the  motto,  one  may  add  the  motif,  of 
the  poem  in  which  he  most  eloquently 
set  forth  his  new  paganism,  the  Hymn  to 
Proserpine : 

"  O  Gods  dethroned  and  deceased,  cast  forth,  wiped 

out  in  a  day  ! 
From  your  wrath  is  the  world  released,  redeemed 

from  your  chains,  m,en  say. 
New  Gods  are  crowned  in  the  city ;  their  flowers 

have  broken  your  rods  ; 
They  are  mercifid,  clothed  with  pity,  the  young 

compassionate  Gods. 

[34] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

But  for  me  their  new  device  is  barren,  the  days 

are  bare  ; 
Things  long  fast  over  suffice,  and  men  forgotten 

that  were. 
Time  and  the  Gods  are  at  strife  ;  ye  dwell  in  the 

midst  thereof. 
Draining  a  little  life   from   the  barren  breasts  of 

love. 
I  say  to  you,  cease,  take  rest ;   yea,  I  say  to  you 

all,  be  at  peace. 
Till  the  bitter  milk  of  her  breast  and  the  barren 

bosom  shall  cease. 
Wilt  thou  yet  take  all,  Galilean  ?    but  these  thou 

shall  not  take. 
The  laurel,  the  palms  and  the  paean,  the  breasts 

of  the  nymphs  in  the  brake  ; 
Breasts  more  soft  than  a  dove's,  that  tremble  with 

tenderer  breath  ; 
And  all  the  wings  of  the  Loves,  and  all  the  joy 
'■J  before  death  ; 

All  the  feet  of  the  hours  that  sound  as  a  single  lyre, 

[35] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Dropped   and  deep   in  the  flowers,  with  strings 

that  flicker  like  fire. 
More   than   these   wilt   thou   give,   things  fairer 

than  all  these  things  ? 
Nay,  for  a  little  we  live, and  life  hath  mutable  wings. 
A  Utile  while  and  we  die  ;   shall  life  not  thrive  as 

it  may  ? 
For  no  man  under  the  sky  lives  twice,  outliving 

his  day. 
And  grief  is  a  grievous  thing,  and  a  man  hath 

enough  of  his  tears  : 
Why  should  he  labour,  and  bring  fresh  grief  to 

blacken  his  years  ? 
Thou  hast  conquered,  O  pale  Galilean  ;  the  world 

has  grown  grey  from  thy  breath  ; 
We  have  drunken  of  things  Lethean,  and  fed  on 

the  fulness  of  death. 
Laurel  is  green  for  a  season,  and  love  is  sweet  for 

a  day  ; 
But  love   grows   bitter   with   treason,   and  laurel 

outlives  not  May. 

[36] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Sleep,  shall  we  sleep  after  all  ?   for  the  world  is 

not  sweet  in  the  end  ; 
For  the  old  faiths  loosen  and  fall,  the  new  years 

ruin  and  rend. 
Fate  is  a  sea  without  shore,  and  the  soul  is  a  rock 

that  abides  ; 
But  her  ears  are  vexed  with  the  roar  and  her 

face  with  the  foam  of  the  tides. 
O  lips  that  the  live  blood  faints  in,  the  leavings 

of  racks  and  rods! 

0  ghastly  stories  of  saints,  dead  limbs  of  gibbeted  gods 
Though  all  men  abase  them  before  you  in  spirit, 

and  all  knees  bend, 

1  kneel  not  neither  adore  you,  but  standing,  look 

to  the  end. 

*^*  *^  ^t*  *^  ^^  »1*  *lr  *1»  ^[*  «J*  *1*  *if  »1* 

^  #^  ^  ^  *j*  *X*  *X%  *y*  T*  T*  •T*  T*  *i* 

Though  the  feet  of  thine  high  priests  tread  where 
thy  lords  and  our  forefathers  trod. 

Though  these  that  were  Gods  are  dead,  and  thou 
being  dead  art  a  God, 

[37] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Though    before    thee    the    throned    Cytherean    be 

fallen,  and  hidden  her  head, 
Yet  thy  kingdom  shall  pass,  Galilean,  thy  dead 

shall  go  down  to  thee  dead. 
Of  the  maiden  thy  mother  men  sing  cw  a  goddess 

with  grace  clad  around  ; 
Thou    art    throned    where    another    was    king ; 

where  another  was  queen  she  is  crowned. 
Yea,  once  we  had  sight  of  another  :   but  now  she 

is  queen,  say  these. 
Not  as  thine,  not  as  thine  was  our  mother,  a  blos- 
som of  flowering  seas. 
Clothed  round  with  the  world's  desire  as  with 

raiment  as  fair  as  the  foam. 
And  fleeter  than  kindled  fire,  and  a  goddess  and 

m,other  of  Rome. 
For  thine  came  pale  and  a  maiden,  and  sister  to 

sorrow  ;    but  ours. 
Her   deep   hair   heavily    laden   with   odour   and 

colour  of  flowers, 

[38] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

White  rose  of  the  rose-white  water,  a  silver  splen- 
dour, a  flame. 

Bent  down  unto  us  that  besought  her,  and  earth 
grew  sweet  with  her  name. 

For  thine  came  weeping,  a  slave  among  slaves, 
and  rejected  ;  but  she 

Came  flushed  from  the  full-flushed  wave,  and 
imperial,  her  foot  on  the  sea. 

And  the  wonderful  waters  knew  her,  the  winds 
and  the  viewless  ways. 

And  the  roses  grew  rosier,  and  bluer  the  sea- 
blue  stream  of  the  bays." 

The  essential  elements  of  Swinburne's 
imagination  and  method  are  all  here  pres- 
ent in  this  delineation  of  opposed  divini- 
ties each  powerful  over  human  life.  The 
identical  theme  is  set  forth  again  under 
the  guise  of  mediseval  fiction  in  the  poem 
"Laus  Veneris,"  where  the  knight  of  the 

[39] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
Venusberg  legend  sets  in   antithesis  the 
pagan  and  the  Christian  scheme  of  Hfe, 
and    embodies    in    himself   the    apostacy 
from  Christian  ideals  — 

"  For  I  was  of  Christ's  choosing,  I  God's  knight, — " 
and  his  adhesion  to  the  lady  of  the  myth; 

"  For  till  the  thunder  in  the  trumpet  be, 
Soul  may  divide  from  body,  but  not  we 

One  from  another  ;  I  hold  thee  with  my  hand, 
I  let  mine  eyes  have  all  their  will  of  thee. " 

Apart  from  the  theory  and  the  imagery, 
these  poems  are  also  identical  in  the  tone 
of  sad,  dark  farewell  which  converts  each 
of  them  into  a  lament  for  love,  for  life 
itself.  The  protagonist  of  either  poem  has 
finished  with  life.  Both  poems  have  the 
motion  of  life,  a  vital  breath  in  their  lyrical 

[40] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
expression  of  emotion  profoundly  modi- 
fied by  thought;  but  about  the  imagery, 
the  figures  of  Aphrodite,  the  Virgin,  the 
Lady  of  the  Venusberg,  and  also  the  Cru- 
cifix that  defines  the  conception  of  Christ 
in  "Laus  Veneris,"  —  about  all  these 
there  lingers  the  Pre-Raphaelite  habit  of 
imagination;  the  imagery  has  more  aflBn- 
ity  with  modes  of  sacerdotal  art,  with 
symbolism  and  the  attributive  in  imagin- 
ative power  than  it  has  with  the  free  vital- 
ity that  is  more  properly  the  sphere  of 
poetry. 

The  new  paganism,  of  which  these  two 
poems  are  elemental  expressions  receives  a 
widely  varied  illustration  in  the  body  of 
poetry  that  is  grouped  about  them.  Several 
of  these  are  dramatic  lyrics  containing  a 

[41] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
situation  or  a  slight  story;  others  are 
hardly  more  than  exercises  in  verse,  often 
in  French  forms;  still  others  are  deeply 
meditated  or  elaborately  studied  after  the 
sentiment,  the  phrasing  and  the  thought- 
movement  of  the  Greek  antique.  The 
whole  spirit,  however,  is  romantic  in  mood 
and  conduct  and  more  nigh  to  the  essen- 
tially mediaeval  than  to  the  modern  or  to 
the  ancient.  The  dominant  memories  of 
Swinburne,  however,  whether  intellec- 
tual or  imaginative,  lie  in  classical  anti- 
quity; and,  so  far  as  he  has  need  of  any 
divine  principle  in  his  verse,  in  concrete 
forms,  he  has  found  approach  to  the  Greek 
gods  most  facile.  He  achieves  the  most 
genuine  appearance  of  belief  in  the  gods 
that  has  fallen  to  the  fortune  of  any  Eng- 

[42] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
lish  poet,  perhaps  of  any  poet  in  any 
modern  literature.  The  recurring  hymn  to 
the  Sun,  under  its  many  forms,  which  has 
already  been  alluded  to,  is  a  deep  note  of 
his  temperament.  The  classical  immer- 
sion of  his  mind  had  made  clean  work  of 
all  Christian  symbolism;  it  had  swept  it 
away;  and  in  its  place  came,  for  imagina- 
tive purposes,  the  Greek  forms  of  old  di- 
vinity and  myth,  but  less  as  idols  of  hope 
than  idols  of  memory.  The  close  of  the 
"Hymn  to  Proserpine"  gives  his  point 
of  faith  with  most  precision ;  death  is  the 
end  of  all,  but  he  chooses  for  his  com- 
panions in  death  the  dead  gods,  —  he 
will  descend  to  Proserpine  where  all  have 
gone.  His  faith  is  a  farewell;  a  Vale  not 
an  Ave. 

[43] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
The  new  paganism  in  which  imagina- 
tive reminiscence  plays  so  great  a  part, 
effecting  this  renascence  of  antique  sym- 
boHsm  in  the  poet's  mind,  also  finds  ex- 
pression in  a  more  direct  and  concrete 
presentation  of  the  experience  as  well  as  of 
the  theory  of  passion,  both  in  the  form  of 
dramatic  incident  or  situation  and  in  the 
form  of  allegorized  figuration  in  art. 
Whether  set  forth  under  a  classical  or  later 
name,  Sappho  or  Faustine  or  Felise,  or 
in  the  namelessness  of  a  dream  of  pas- 
sion, Swinburne  delineates  the  moment 
with  vividness  of  sensation,  with  languid 
hazes,  with  lights  and  shadows  as  of  some 
Venetian  picture;  or  in  his  symbolical 
poems  he  builds  up  a  figure,  a  background, 
a  landscape  as  of  some  mythic  painting, 

[44] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
though  using  mainly  cadence  as  his  means 
of  evoking  it.  "Dolores"  is  a  poem  of  this 
last  type,  and  characteristic  of  his  genius, 
in  subject,  handling  and  tone.  In  all  these 
poems  which,  in  various  ways,  by  dramat- 
ic, lyric  and  meditative  modes,  set  forth 
the  theme  of  the  mortal  ways  of  desire,  the 
accompaniment  of  the  verse  is  a  lament, 
seldom  light,  usually  profound  and  often 
touched  with  bitterness.  Pain  is  the 
master-emotion  in  the  verse,  unconcealed, 
rebellious,  self-pitying.  The  knight  of  the 
"Laus  Veneris"  is  filled  full  of  it;  so  are 
the  cadences  of  "Dolores;"  so  are  some 
of  the  lightest  and  most  delicate  of  the 
lyrics. 

The   poem  which   sets   forth   this   as- 
pect of  the  paganism  of  a  modern  spirit 

[45] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
with  nobleness  of  feeling  is  "Hesperia, " 
which  after  its  fine  nature-opening,  goes 
on  with  its  human  burden  in  these  lines: 

"  From  the  bountiful  infinite  west,  from  the  happy 
m,emorial  places 
Full  of  the  stately  repose  and  the  lordly  delight 
of  the  dead. 
Where  the  fortunate  islands  are  lit  with  the  light 
of  ineffable  faces. 
And  the  sound  of  a  sea  without  wind  is  about 
them,  and  sunset  is  red. 
Come  back  to   redeem  and  release  me  from,  love 
that  recalls  and  represses. 
That  cleaves  to  my  flesh  as  a  flame,  till  the  ser- 
pent has  eaten  his  fill  ; 
From   the    bitter   delights   of    the    dark,    and  the 
feverish,  the  furtive  caresses 
That  murder  the  youth   in   a  man   or  ever  his 
heart  have  its  will. 

[46] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Thy   lips    cannot   laugh    and   thine    eyes    cannot 
weep  ;    thou  art  pale  as  a  rose  is. 
Paler    and  sweeter    than    leaves  that    cover  the 
blush  of  the  bud  ; 
And  the  heart  of  the  flower  is  compassion,  and 
pity  the  core  it  encloses. 
Pity,   not  love,   that  is   born   of  the  breath  and 
decays  with  the  blood. 
As  the  cross  that  a  wild  nun  clasps  till  the  edge 
of  it  bruises  her  bosom. 
So  love  wounds  as  we  grasp  it,  and  blackens  and 
burns  as  a  flame  ; 
I     have    loved    overmuch     in    my    life;    when 
the  live  bud   bursts  with  the  blossom. 
Bitter  as  ashes  or  tears  is  the  fruit,  and  the  wine 
thereof  shame. 
As  a  heart  that  its  anguish  divides  is  the  green 
bud  cloven  asunder  ; 
As  the  blood  of  a  man  self -slain  is  the  flush  of 
the  leaves  that  allure  ; 

[47] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

And  the  perfume  as  poison  and  wine  to  the  brain, 
a  delight  and  a  wonder  ; 
And  the  thorns  are  too  sharp  for  a  boy,  too  slight 
for  a  man  to  endure. 
Too  soon  did  I  love  it,  and  lost  love's  rose  ;   and 
I  cared  not  for  glory's  ; 
Only  the  blossoms  of  sleep  and  of  pleasure  were 
mixed  in  my  hair. 
Was  it  myrtle  or  poppy  thy  garland  was  woven 
with,  O  my  Dolores  ? 
Wa^  it  pallor  of  slumber,  or  blush  as  of  blood, 
that  I  found  in  thee  fair  ? 
Far  desire  is  a  respite  from  love,  and  the  flesh 
not  the  heart  is  her  fuel ; 
She    was    sweet    to   me    once,    who    am    fled 
and     escaped     from     the     range     of     her 
reign  ; 
Who  behold  as  of  old  time  at  hand  as  I  turn, 
with  her  mouth  growing  cruel. 
And  flushed  as  with  wine  with  the  blood  of  her 
lovers.  Our  Lady  of  Pain. 

[48] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Low  down  where  the  thicket  is  thicker  with  thorns 
than  with  leaves  in  the  summer, 
In  the  brake  is  a  gleaming  of  eyes  and  a  hissing 
of  tongues  that  I  knew  ; 
And  the  lithe    long  throats  of  her  snakes   reach 
round  her,  their  mouths  overcome  her. 
And  her  lips  grow  cool  with  their  foam,  made 
moist  as  a  desert  with  dew. 
With  the  thirst    and  the  hunger  of  lust   though 
her  beautiful  lips  be  so  bitter. 
With  the  cold  foul  foam  of  the  snakes  they  soften 
and  redden  and  smile  ; 
And   her   fierce    mouth   sweetens,    her    eyes   wax 
wide  and   her  eyelashes  glitter, 
And  she  laughs  with  a  savour  of  blood  in  her 
face,  and  a  savour  of  guile. 
She  laughs,  and  her  hands  reach  hither,  her  hair 
blows  hither  and  hisses. 
As  a  lowlit  flame  in  a  wind,  back-blown  till  it 
shudder  and  leap  ; 

[49] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Let  her  lips  not  again  lay  hold  on  my  soul,  nor 
her  poisonous  kisses. 
To  consume  it  alive  and  divide  from  thy  bosom. 
Our  Lady  of  Sleep. 
Ah  daughter  of  sunset   and  slumber,   if  now  it 
return  into  prison, 
Who  shall  redeem  it  anew  ?  But  we,  if  thou  wilt, 
let  us  fly  ; 
Let  us  take  to  us,  now  that  the  white  skies  thrill 
with  a  moon  unarisen. 
Swift  horses  of  fear  or  of  love,  take  flight  and 
depart  and  not  die. 
They  are  swifter  than  dream,s,  they  are  stronger 
than  death  ;    there  is  none  that  hath  rid- 
den. 
None  that  shall  ride  in  the  dim  strange  ways  of 
his  life  as  we  ride  ; 
By  the  meadows  of  m^emory,  the  highlands  of  hope, 
and  the  shore  that  is  hidden, 
Where  life  breaks  loud  and  unseen,  a  sonorous 
invisible  tide  ; 

[50] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

By  the  sands  where  sorrow  has  trodden,  the  salt 
'pools  hitter  and  sterile. 
By  the  thundering  reef  and  the  low  sea-wall  and 
the  channel  of  years. 
Our  wild  steeds  press  on  the  night,  strain  hard 
through  pleasure  and  peril. 
Labour  and  listen  and  pant  not  or  pause  for  the 
peril  that  nears  ; 
And    the    sound    of    them    trampling    the     way 
cleaves  night  as  an  arrow  asunder. 
And  slow    by  the  sand-hill   and  swift  by  the 
down  with  its  glimpses  of  grass. 
Sudden    and   steady   the   music,    as    eight   hoofs 
trample  and  thunder. 
Rings  in  the  ear  of  the  low  blind  wind  of  the 
night  as  we  pass  ; 
Shrill  shrieks  in  our  faces  the  blind  bland  air  that 
was  mute  as  a  maiden. 
Stung  into  storm  by  the  speed  of  our  passage, 
and  deaf  where  we  past ; 

[51] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

And  our  spirits  too  burn  as  we  bound,  thine  holy 
but  mine  heavy-laden. 
As  we  burn  with  the  fire  of  our  flight ;  ah  love, 
shall  we  win  at  the  last  ? " 

The  procession  of  Swinburne's  studies 
of  passion,  highly  composite  in  artistic  ma- 
terial and  method  as  they  are  and  diversi- 
fied by  their  kinship  with  many  moods  and 
periods  of  the  spirit  of  poetry,  have,  to- 
gether with  their  vividness  of  sensation 
and  their  sad  meditative  burden  of  the 
emptiness  of  mortal  things,  a  monotone 
that  is  unmistakable,  as  omnipresent  and 
profound  as  the  monotone  in  his  revolu- 
tionary verses.  It  is  the  monotone  of  fun- 
damental emotion  in  the  one  as  in  the 
other,  and  springs  from  a  depth  of  habit- 
ual feeling  that  is  a  part  of  the  poet's  tem- 

[52] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
perament.  The  experience  of  passion  is  not 
seized  dramatically  in  the  true  sense,  it  is 
seized  lyrically,  and  the  ultimate  mood  is 
that  of  the  weariness  of  life  which  in  place 
of  a  dramatic  exhaustion  of  the  action  in 
tragic  catastrophe,  issues  only  in  an  ex- 
hausted emotion;  it  belongs  to  the  type 
that  it  should  end  in  weakness.  The 
end  of  the  feeling  is  a  transformation 
into  thought;  into  meditation;  in  this 
intellectual  climax  the  mood  takes  on  the 
appearance  of  philosophy,  of  a  surrender 
of  life  to  death,  of  the  prayer  to  Proser- 
pine before  the  descent  of  the  poet  to  the 
shades  of  the  under- world.  This  philos- 
ophy in  which  the  lyrical  mood  of  Swin- 
burne under  these  impulses  evaporates  is 
most  beautifully  and  winningly  given  in 

[53] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
the  verses  so  well  known  by  their  melody 
alone,  "The  Garden  of  Proserpine." 
They  contain  the  summary  of  his  verse  of 
life-experience  for  the  individual,  of  emo- 
tional experience  properly,  and  are  the 
death-song  of  the  pagan  ideal,  not  in  its 
historic  but  its  aesthetic  sense,  as  it  was 
conceived  and  presented  by  him : 

"  Here,  where  the  world  is  quiets 

Here,  where  all  trouble  seems 
Dead  winds'  and  spent  waves'  riot 

In  doubtful  dreams  of  dreams  ; 
I  watch  the  green  field  growing 
For  reaping  folk  and  sowing. 
For  harvest-time  and  mowing, 

A  sleepy  world  of  streams. 

I  am  tired  of  tears  and  laughter. 
And  men  that  laugh  and  weep, 

[54] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Of  what  may  come  hereafter 

For  men  that  sow  to  reap  : 
I  am  weary  of  days  and  hours. 
Blown  buds  of  barren  flowers. 
Desires  and  dreams  and  powers 

And  everything  but  sleep. 

Here  life  has  death  for  neighbour^ 

And  far  from  eye  or  ear 
Wan  waves  and  wet  winds  labour^ 

Weak  ships  and  spirits  steer  ; 
They  drive  adrift,  and  whither 
They  wot  not  who  make  thither  ; 
But  no  such  winds  blow  hither  ; 

And  no  such  things  grow  here. 

No  growth  of  moor  or  coppice. 

No  heather-flower  or  vine. 
But  bloomless  buds  of  poppies. 

Green  grapes  of  Proserpine, 
Pale  beds  of  blowing  rushes 
Where  no  leaf  blooms  or  blushes 

[55] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Save  this  whereout  she  crushes 
For  dead  men  deadly  wine. 

Pale,  without  name  or  number. 

In  fruitless  fields  of   corn. 
They  how  themselves  and  slumber 

All  night  till  light  is  horn  ; 
And  like  a  soul  belated. 
In  hell  and  heaven  unmated, 
By  cloud  and  mist  abated 

Comes  out  of  darkness  morn. 

Though  one  were  strong  as  seven, 
He  too  with  death  shall  dwell. 

Nor  wake  with  wings  in  heaven. 
Nor  weep  for  pains  in  hell  ; 

Though  one  were  fair  as  roses. 

His  beauty  clouds  and  closes  ; 

And  well  though  love  reposes. 
In  the  end  it  is  not  well. 

Pale,  beyond  porch  and  portal. 

Crowned  with  calm  leaves,  she  stands 

[56] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Who  gathers  all  things  mortal 

With  cold  immortal  hands  ; 
Her  languid  lips  are  sweeter 
Than  love's  who  fears  to  greet  her 
To  men  that  mix  and  meet  her 

From  many  times  and  lands. 

She  waits  for  each  and  other, 
She  waits  for  all  men  born  ; 

Forgets  the  earth  her  mother. 
The  life  of  fruits  and  corn  ; 

And  spring  and  seed  and  swallow 

Take  wing  for  her  and  follow 

Where  summer  song  rings  hollow 
And  flowers  are  put  to  scorn. 

There  go  the  loves  that  wither. 

The  old  loves  with  wearier  wings  ; 

And  all  dead  years  draw  thither. 
And  all  disastrous  things  ; 

Dead  dreams  of  days  forsaken. 

Blind  buds  that  snows  have  shaken, 

[57] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Wild  leaves  that  winds  have  taken, 
Red  strays  of  ruined  springs. 

We  are  not  sure  of  sorrow. 

And  joy  was  never  sure  ; 
To-day  will  die  to-morrow  ; 

Time  stoops  to  no  man's  lure  ; 
And  love,  grown  faint  and  fretful 
With  lips  hut  half  regretful 
Sighs,  and  with  eyes  forgetful 

Weeps  that  no  loves  endure. 

From  too  much  love  of  living. 
From  hope  and  fear  set  free. 

We  thank  with  brief  thanksgiving 
Whatever  gods  may  be 

That  no  life  lives  for  ever  ; 

That  dead  men  rise  up  never  ; 

That  even  the  weariest  river 
Winds  somewhere  safe  to  sea. 

Then  star  nor  sun  shall  waken. 
Nor  any  change  of  light : 

[58] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
Nor  sound  of  waters  shaken. 

Nor  any  sound  or  sight  : 
Nor  wintry  leaves  nor  vernal 
Nor  days  nor  things  diurnal. 
Only  the  sleep  eternal 
In  an  eternal  night." 

In  his  later  work  the  theme  of  passion 
was  less  brilliantly  treated  than  in  these 
first  poems,  and  few  of  the  passages  in 
which  he  reverts  to  the  subject  are  so  sig- 
nificant, characteristic  or  successful.  Pas- 
sion as  an  element  in  human  life  attracted 
him  rather  in  more  dramatic  ways,  as  it 
exists  in  the  great  trilogy  of  Queen  Mary 
felt  in  diverse  modes  by  those  about  the 
Queen  from  the  tender  and  noble  figure 
of  Chastelard  to  the  weakness  of  Darnley 
and  the  strength  of  Bothwell;  or  it  at- 

[59] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
tracted  him  as  the  hfe-element  of  the  myth 
of  Tristram  and  Iseult,  that  in  which  they 
had  the  perfection  of  their  being  and  the 
completion  of  their  fate.  In  both  cases 
this  is  the  drama  of  passion,  not  its  lyric- 
ism; and  in  both  cases,  too,  it  is  divorced 
from  the  after-sickliness  of  thought  that 
attends  it  in  the  youthful  poems,  and  is 
free  from  the  envelopment  of  the  pagan 
world,  from  dead  gods  and  past  time;  it 
stands  by  itself,  in  its  own  right,  a  part  of 
nature  and  life  universal,  a  reality.  No 
English  poem  surpasses  "Tristram  of 
Lyonesse"  in  the  quality  of  passion;  it  is 
great  as  a  representation  of  passion,  pri- 
marily, and  equal  to  the  fame  of  its  theme. 
Yet  it  is  rather  upon  the  younger  verse,  in 
the  early  passionate  efflorescence  of  his 

[60] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
poetic  nature,  that  the  fame  of  Swinburne 
as  an  original,  unique  and  powerful  expo- 
nent of  the  passion  of  life  in  the  ways  of 
desire,  brilliantly  illustrating  the  multi- 
form romantic  spirit,  must  rest. 

VI 

The  meditative  power  of  Swinburne's 
mind  gradually  displaced  the  passionate 
impulse  of  the  senses,  in  his  verse.  He  is  a 
very  thoughtful  poet.  The  intellectual 
burden  of  his  poetry  first  appeared  in  the 
vigour  with  which  he  seized  and  held  to  the 
idea  of  fate;  fate  is  as  elemental  in  his 
work  as  passion  and  is  its  true  comple- 
ment. The  conception  at  the  beginning 
may  have  been  only  a  part  of  his  Greek 
legacy,  made  familiar  to  him  in  his  study 

[61] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWLNBURNE 
of  Greek  drama  and  adopted  from  it  into 
his  own  literary  scheme  of  art  and  phil- 
osophy of  life.  In  "  Atalanta  of  Calydon", 
fate  is  set  forth  in  the  choruses;  it  is  associ- 
ated there  with  the  feeling  of  bitter  hos- 
tility to  the  gods.  There  is  a  Lucretian 
sternness  and  fierceness  in  all  of  Swin- 
burne's invective  against  those  aspects  of 
religion  which  were  to  him  what  supersti- 
tion was  to  the  old  Roman;  and  he  uses 
violence  of  phrase  in  the  expression  of  his 
mood.  It  is  thus  that  he  comes  to  a  climax 
of  thought  in  the  attack  on  the  supernal 
powers  which  ends  in  the  words,  "the 
supreme  evil,  God."  The  thought  is 
arrived  at  through  the  spectacle  of  the 
suffering  of  the  human  race,  and  applies, 
as  it  were,  to  the  Zeus  of  Prometheus. 

[62] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

"  Thou  hast  fed  one  rose  with  dust  of  many  men; 

Thou  hast  marred  one  face  with  fire  of  many  tears; 
Thou  hast  taken  love,  and  given  us  sorrow  again; 

With  pain  thou  hast  filled  us  full  to  the  eyes 
and  cars. 
Tlurefore  because  thou  art  strong,  our  father,  and  we 

Feeble  ;  and  tJiou  art  against  us,  and  thine  hand 
Constrains  us  in  the  shallows  of  the  sea 

And  breaks  us  at  the  limits  of  the  land  ; 
Because  thou  hast  bent  thy  lightnings  as  a  bow. 

And  loosed  the  hours  like  arrows  ;  and  let  fall 
Sins  and  wild  words  and  many  a  winged  woe 

And  wars  among  us,  and  one  end  of  all ; 
Because  thou  hast  made  the  thunder,  and  thy  feet 

Are  as  a  rushing  water  when  the  skies 
Break,  and  thy  face  as  an  exceeding  heat 

And  flames  of  fire  the  eyelids  of  thine  eyes  ; 
Because  thou  art  over  all  who  are  over  us  ; 

Because  thy  name  is  life  and  our  name  death  ; 
Because  thou  art  cruel  and  men  are  piteous. 

And  our  hands  labour  and  thine  hand  scattereth  ; 

[63] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Lo,  with  hearts  rent  and  knees  made  tremulous, 
Lo,  with  ephemeral  lips  and  casual  breath. 
At  least  we  witness  of  thee  ere  we  die 
That  these  things  are  not  otherwise,  hut  thus  ; 
That  each  man  in  his  heart  sigheth,  and  saith, 
That  all  men  even  as  I, 
All  we  are  against  thee,  against  thee,  O  God  most 
high." 

In  such  passages,  of  which  this  was  the 
earhest,  the  Ufe-weariness  that  belongs  to 
exhausted  passion  is  extended  over  the 
whole  of  life,  and  the  philosophy  set  forth 
is  frankly  atheistic.  The  passing  away  of 
the  successive  hierarchies  of  gods  that 
have  been  exalted  in  the  heavens,  includ- 
ing the  entire  symbolism  of  Christianity, 
is  as  constant  a  theme  of  Swinburne's  im- 
agination and  meditation  as  is  the  transi- 

[64] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
toriness  of  the  generations  of  men  and 
their  works ;  nor  is  there  only  this  denial  of 
the  gods,  but  with  it  goes  that  implacable 
hostility  to  them  and  their  ways,  which 
has  been  alluded  to,  giving  often  to  the 
verse  an  edge  of  scorn  and  hate.  Swin- 
burne derived  from  Greek  literature  the 
point  of  view,  so  far  as  the  history  of  man 
under  the  Olympian  dispensation  was 
concerned;  he  derived  from  the  revolu- 
tionary poets  an  attitude  toward  histori- 
cal Christianity  in  its  mediaeval  forms  and 
in  its  institutional  power,  which  was  a 
practical  repetition  of  the  same  point  of 
view;  however  he  approached  super- 
natural religion  he  collided  with  the  eter- 
nal mystery  of  God's  dealing  with  man- 
kind,   and   also   with   the   temporal   dis- 

[65] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
pensation  of  the  professional  ministers  of 
God,  the  priesthood  wherever  found. 
The  anti-Christian  verse  is,  of  course,  in- 
cidental to  and  a  part  of  the  great  mass  of 
revolutionary  verse,  and  belongs  to  the 
poet's  crusade  against  the  social  powers 
that  be,  to  his  ranking  himself  with  the 
spirit  of  Burns  and  the  later  upholders  of 
the  powers  of  light,  that  is  of  human  in- 
tellect, liberty  and  love.  But,  besides  this 
aspect  of  it,  there  is  a  philosophical  side  to 
his  thought,  apart  from  its  revolutionary 
intention,  by  virtue  of  which  it  must  be  re- 
garded abstractly  as  his  own  poetic  atti- 
tude to  the  mystery  of  life  itself.  Fate  is  the 
simplest  word  to  describe  the  power  in 
whose  dark  and  infinite  grasp  Swin- 
burne habitually  sees  the  universe  of  man. 

[66] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
Deeply  impressed  as  the  poet  is  by  the 
conception  of  fate  in  life  and  in  the  uni- 
verse, he  does  not  embody  it  in  either  his 
dramas  or  his  dramatic  narrative  with 
great  power;  he  rather  describes  it  than 
presents  its  operation;  it  is  a  presence 
rather  than  a  force  in  his  verse.  The  story 
of  Atalanta,  and  also  that  of  Erechtheus 
contain  fate,  in  piteous  and  cruel  forms,  but 
the  will  of  the  gods  in  either  case  seems 
arbitrary  rather  than  fatal.  In  the  Trilogy 
of  Queen  Mary  the  element  of  fate  is  dis- 
cernible in  the  constant  reminiscence, 
though  the  play,  of  Chastelard's  execu- 
tion and  in  Mary  Beaton  who  is  the  em- 
bodiment of  that  memory  and  shall  re- 
main with  the  Queen  until  the  latter's 
death  at  the  block  expiates  the  original 

[67] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
wrong,  or  at  least  crowns  it  as  a  consumma- 
tion; but  the  linking  of  fate  which  should 
connect  one  with  the  other  directly  and 
impressively,  and  as  a  law  of  necessity  is 
not  shown.  In  the  other  dramas  there  is  a 
similar  laxity  in  the  causal  operation  of 
fate, —  the  fatal  necessity  of  the  action  is 
not  felt  as  power,  but  is  described  as 
story.  In  "Tristram  of  Lyonesse, "  it  is 
the  passion,  not  the  fate  of  the  lovers'  love 
that  is  in  the  foreground  of  interest.  In  the 
shorter  poems  the  method  of  presenting 
the  general  subject-matter  is  more  ab- 
stract and  by  means  of  passages  of  in- 
vective. "  Anactoria"  is  the  best  example, 
where  the  outcry  against  the  divine  power 
is  repeatedly  raised,  with  a  fierce  vin- 
dictiveness : 

[68] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

"Is  not  his  incense  bitterness,  his  meat 
Murder  ?    Jiis  hidden  face  and  iron  feet 
Hath  not  man  known,  and  felt  them  on  their  way 
Threaten  and  trample  all  things  and  every  day  ? 
Hath  he  not  sent  us  hunger  ?  who  hath  cursed 
Spirit  and  flesh  with  longing  ?    fllled  with  thirst 
Their  lips  who  cried  unto  him  ?   who  hade  exceed 
The  fervid  will,  fall  short  the  feeble  deed. 
Bade  sink  the  spirit  and  the  flesh  aspire. 
Pain  animate  the  dust  of  dead  desire. 
And  life  yield  up  her  flower  to  violent  fate  ? 
Him  would  I  reach,  him  smite,  him  desecrate. 
Pierce  the  cold  lips  of  God  with  human  breath. 
And  mix  his  immortality  with  death.*' 

At  the  conclusion  of  this  poem  is  the  first 
expression  of  any  possible  human  victory 
in  the  strife  with  the  gods.  It  takes  form  in 
the  thought  that,  whatever  misfortune 
may  be  visited  upon  Sappho  in  life,  yet 
after  death  she  will  have  an  immortality  in 

[69] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
her  words  still  breathing  on  the  lips  of 

"  Albeit  I  die  indeed 
And  hide  myself  and  sleep  and  no  man  heed. 
Of  me  the  high  God  hath  not  all  his  will. 
Blossom  of  branches,  and  on  each  high  hill 
Clear  air  and  wind,  and  under  in  clamorous  vales 
Fierce  noises  of  the  fiery  nightingales. 
Buds  burning  in  the  sudden  spring  like  fire. 
The  wan  washed  sand  and  the  waves'  vain  desire. 
Sails  seen  like    blown  white  flowers  at  sea,  and 

words 
That  bring  tears  swiftest,  and  long  notes  of  birds 
Violently  singing  till  the  whole  world  sings  — 
/  Sappho,  shall  be  one  with  all  these  things. 
With  all  high  things  for  ever  ;  and  my  face 
Seen  once,  my  songs  once  heard  in  a  strange  place. 
Cleave  to  mens  lives,  and  waste  the  days  thereof 
With  gladness  and  m,uch  sadness  and  long  love.'' 

This  hope  of  immortality  in  the  mind  and 
for  the  service  of  man  is  the  prelude  to 

[70] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
Swinburne's    later    exposition    of    man's 
faith  in  himself. 

The  earlier  attitude  of  hostility  to  the 
gods  yields  in  the  poet's  maturer  years  to  a 
prevailing  mood  of  high-spirited  indif- 
ference, which  is  felt  rather  toward  fate 
under  the  forms  of  the  imagery  of  nature 
than  under  those  of  divine  beings.  The 
passage  which  best  concentrates  it  is  the 
speech  of  Tristram,  concerning  fate  which 
is  described  only  by  negatives  as  the  un- 
known infinite  in  the  universe : 

"  How  should  it  turn  from  its  great  way  to  give 
Man  that  must  die  a  clearer  space  to  live  ? 
Why  should  the  waters  of  the  sea  be  cleft, 
The  hills  be  molten  to  his  right  and  left. 
That  he  from  deep  to  deep  might  pass    dry-shod 
Or  look  between  the  viewless  heights  on  God  ? 
Hath  he  such  eyes  as,  when  the  shadows  flee, 

[71] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

The  sun  looks  out  with  to  salute  the  sea  ? 
Is  his  hand  bounteous  as  the  morning's  hand  ? 
Or  where  the  night  stands  hath  he  feet  to  stand  ? 
Will  the  storm  cry  not  when  he  bids  it  cease  ? 
Is  it  his  voice  that  saith  to  the  east  wind.  Peace  ? 
Is    his    breath    mightier   than    the   west    wind's 

breath  ? 
Doth  his  heart  know  the  things  of  life  and  death  ? 
Can  his  face  bring  forth  sunshine  and  give  rain. 
Or  his  weak  will  that  dies  and  lives  again 
Make  one  thing  certain  or  bind  one  thing  fast. 
That,  as  he  willed,  it  shall  be  at  the  last  ? 
How  should  the  storms  of  heaven  and  kindled 

lights 
And  all  the  depths  of  things  and  topless  heights 
And  air  and  earth  and  fire  and  water  change 
Their  likeness,  and  the  natural  world  grow  strange. 
And  all  the  limits  of  their  life  undone 
Lose  count  of  time  and  conscience  of  the  sun. 
And  that  fall  under  which  was  fixed  above, 
That  man  might  have  a  larger  hour  for  love  ?  " 

[72] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
It  is  in  this  identification  of  fate  with  the 
universe  of  greater  being,  in  a  form  of  ap- 
prehension which  hovers  between  pan- 
theism in  its  aspect  of  nature-force  and  in 
its  aspect  of  humanity,  that  Swinburne's 
mind  rests  in  its  final  meditation.  The 
hymn  entitled  "Hertha"  sets  forth  the 
matter  in  full  and  at  great  length,  with  a 
principal  dependence  in  the  imagery  on 
Igdrasil,  the  tree  of  life.  In  its  main  phil- 
osophic intention  the  poem  is  hardly  to  be 
distinguished  from  Emerson's  "  Brahma", 
which  is  the  type  of  such  poetic  thought; 
but  Swinburne  gives  it  a  new  turn  and 
transforms  its  meaning  by  grafting  into  it 
the  idea  that  mankind  is  the  highest  per- 
sonification of  the  divine  known  to  man 
and  hence  that  true  worship  and  religion 

[73] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
is  in  the  energy  of  man's  self-expression, 
in  the  apotheosis  of  himself  that  is  self- 
achieved.  The  key  stanza  is  this : 

"  A  creed  is  a  rod. 

And  a  crown  is  of  night ; 
But  this  thing  is  God, 

To  be  man  with  thy  might. 
To  grow  straight  in  the  strength  of  thy  spirit,  and 
live  out  thy  life  as  the  light." 

The  poem  in  its  last  line  makes  the  identifi- 
cation of  man  with  the  infinite  spirit  plain : 

"  Man,  equal  and  one  with  me,  man  that  is  made 
of  me,  man  that  is  /." 

The  same  doctrine  is  more  elaborately 
stated  and  with  a  more  comprehensive  in- 
clusion of  many  past  elements  of  Swin- 
burne's thought,  especially  with  relation 
to  the  passing  away  of  the  gods  and  to  the 

[74] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
history  of  superstition,  in  the  "  Hymn  of 
Man,"  which  Swinburne  himself  de- 
scribes as  "the  birth-song  of  spiritual 
renascence"  and  which  concludes  its 
Miriam-like  outburst  of  triumph  over  the 
fall  of  old  religion  with  the  exultant  cry  : 

"  Glory  to  man  in  the  highest  I  for  Man  is  the 
master  of  things." 

This  is  the  French  apotheosis  of  Reason  in 
its  most  modem  form,  and  may  be  regard- 
ed, perhaps,  as  essentially  a  hymn  of  posi- 
tivism. 

It  thus  appears  that  Swinburne's  mind, 
guided  by  the  preconceptions  of  his  Greek 
studies  and  the  revolutionary  impetus  of 
his  native  genius,  has  been  deeply  con- 
cerned with  reaching  an  intellectual  faith 

[73] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
with  regard  to  the  scheme  of  man's  hfe  as 
it  has  been  seen  by  him  in  history.  In  this 
attempt  he  has  clung  most  tenaciously  to 
the  idea  of  fate,  a  vague  conception  di- 
versely seized  by  his  mind  and  set  forth  in 
a  variety  of  ways.  The  denial  of  the  gods 
was  inherent  in  his  intellectual  position; 
and  the  gods  having  passed  away,  there 
remained  only  such  an  adjustment  of 
mind  to  the  world  emptied  of  old  divinity 
as  is  possible  to  many  a  modern  brooder 
over  thought  besides  the  poet  himself  who 
may  be,  somewhat  at  least,  a  type  of  such 
sceptical  men.  On  the  one  hand  there  was 
the  resource  of  the  conception  of  the  un- 
known infinite  which  is  approached  by 
human  thought  most  commonly  through 
the  majestic  phenomena  of  nature,  and  of 

[76] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
which  the  nature-poetry  of  the  book  of 
Job,  whence  come  the  imaginative  method 
and  scriptural  cadences  of  that  speech  of 
Tristram  that  has  been  quoted,  is  the 
ritual  of  expression.  On  the  other  hand 
there  was  the  resource  of  positivistic  and 
humanitarian  insistence  on  the  religion  of 
Humanity,  the  creed  of  doing  as  the  other 
is  the  creed  of  knowing.  The  apotheosis  of 
human  energy  is  natural  in  any  greatly 
progressive  or  violently  active  age  of  the 
world ;  and  in  the  nineteenth  century,  with 
its  unmeasured  pride  in  itself  and  its  in- 
contestable greatness  of  achievement  in 
both  the  realms  of  knowledge  and  action, 
faith  in  man  sprang  up  and  has  flourished 
as  if  it  were  the  ancient  Igdrasil  itself;  it 
has  seemed  as  if  man  were  a  god  of  nature 

[77] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
and  a  providence  for  the  future,  —  at 
least  that  has  been  the  tendency  of  man's 
late  ideals  in  science  and  philanthropy. 
Man  at  least  thinks  himself  —  what  Swin- 
burne says  the  gods  were  not  —  piteous. 
Swinburne  has  caught  the  infection  of  both 
of  these  intellectual  moods ;  he  has  on  one 
hand  accepted  imaginatively  the  theory  of 
the  unknown  natural  infinite  and  on  the 
other  the  doctrine  of  the  greatness  —  as  he 
frankly  says,  the  godhead — of  man ;  not,  it 
should  be  observed ,  of  men  in  their  parcelled 
and  particular  individuality,  but  of  the  race, 
—  the  apotheosis  is  a  thing  of  collectivity, 
and  without  such  collectivity  would  not  ex- 
ist. Perhaps  his  own  words  should  be  given : 

"  We  men,  the  multiform  features  of  man,  what- 
soever we  be 

[78] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Recreate  him  of  whom  we  are  creatures,  and  all  we 

only  are  he. 
For  each  man  of  all  men  is  God,  but  God  is  the 

fruit  of  the  whole; 
Indivisible    spirit    and   blood,   indiscernible    body 

from  soul. 
Not  men's  but  man's  is  the  glory  of  godhead, — " 

In  working  out  this  side  of  the  theory,  it 
follows  of  necessity  that  the  poet  should 
find  himself  in  a  midmost  ethical  stream, 
that  he  should  end  less  as  a  philosopher 
than  as  a  moralist;  he  would  finally  be  ab- 
sorbed in  the  vindication  of  that  law  of 
life  which  is  humanly  discerned  and  ap- 
plied as  the  will  of  "righteousness"  from 
age  to  age.  The  gods  pass  like  leaves  of  the 
forest,  in  their  generations,  even  as  men 
do;  but  righteousness  is  an  abiding  thing. 
It  is  this  that  is  stated,  very  nobly  and 

[79] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
magnificently  indeed,  in  the  chief  poem  of 
Swinburne's  later  years,  "The  Altar  of 
Righteousness."  This  poem  is  the  climax 
of  his  intellectual  attempt  in  solving  the 
universe,  or  in  reaching  at  least  a  working 
relation  with  respect  to  it;  it  is  the  ulti- 
mate conviction,  the  last  word, —  this  of 
the  majestic  permanence  of  righteousness. 
Does  it  seem  singular  to  any  that  the 
poet  of  passion  should  be  one  with  the 
poet  of  righteousness  ?  There  is  really  no 
discord  in  the  case;  the  two  elements,  at 
least,  never  cross  in  the  verse.  A  poet  gives 
a  representation  of  life,  and  the  variety  of 
his  representation  depends  on  the  richness 
and  complexity  of  his  nature.  Swinburne 
was  endowed  with  power  to  render  with 
unrivalled   vividness,    with   brilliance   of 

[80] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWLXBLRNE 
word  and  melody  of  cadence  the  exper- 
ience of  man's  life  in  passion;  he  was  also 
endowed  with  intellectual  curiosity  and 
restlessness,  with  mental  vigour,  with  ir- 
repressible and  inexhaustible  sympathies 
with  the  pubUc  causes  of  mankind  in  po- 
litical and  religious  social  life,  and  he  had 
thence  his  power  to  interest  himself  in  the 
ideas  that  lie  back  of  all  life,  in  the  phil- 
osophy of  the  divine  element  appearing  in 
the  history  of  the  race  and  in  its  changes 
under  the  shaping  of  time  from  Greek  to 
Christian,  and  so  on  to  the  last  results  of 
modern  speculation.  He  expressed  himself 
from  year  to  year,  according  to  the  faith 
that  was  in  him,  and  he  reached  in  his 
maturity  the  clear  position  which  needs  no 
plainer  definition  than  his  own  lines  con- 

[81] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
tain.  The  original  idea  of  adverse  fate  has 
faded  in  his  mind,  it  would  appear,  to  that 
of  the  immanence  of  the  unknown  in  na- 
ture, indifferent  and  kindless  to  man,  but 
not  consciously  cruel  and  deliberately 
scornful  like  the  old  gods ;  and  this  in  turn 
yields  to  the  prominence  in  his  later 
thought  of  the  essential  necessity  that 
mankind  is  under  to  know  no  god  except  his 
own  spirit,  to  advance  that  spirit  as  the  life 
of  the  race  itself,  and  to  find  the  conscious 
law  of  righteousness  in  its  bosom  age  after 
age  its  only  oracle  and  guide  to  destiny. 

VII 

The  third  great  monochord  of  Swin- 
burne's verse,  after  passion  and  fate,  is 
nature.  The  poet's  genius  is  one  of  singu- 

[82] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
lar  directness,  though  the  fact  is  masked 
and  obscured  by  the  conventionaHzed, 
curious  and  classically  reminiscent  char- 
acter that  so  much  of  his  work  super- 
ficially bears.  The  same  directness  that 
appears  in  his  dealing  with  the  experience 
of  passion,  and  with  the  theory  of  the  di- 
vine element  in  the  universe,  marks  also 
his  treatment  of  nature.  He  is  a  nature- 
poet,  but  rather  in  the  energetic  than  the 
aesthetic  sense.  The  reminiscence  of  his 
boyhood  upbringing  by  the  seas  of  the 
Northumberland  coast  and  of  the  Isle  of 
Wight  is  always  present  in  his  verse  of 
every  kind.  His  description  is  not  deficient 
in  either  abundance  or  beauty  of  detail; 
but  he  seizes  the  landscape  mainly  as  a 
whole,  he  feels  the  forces  abiding  in  it  as 

[83] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
power,  he  is  exalted  by  its  eflBuence  in  him 
as  an  emotion ;  in  a  word,  his  treatment  is 
ample.  Here,  too,  that  extraordinary 
trait  of  primitiveness,  that  love  of  the 
primordial  things  in  thought  and  life,  of 
which  much  illustration  has  already  been 
afforded  in  the  preceding  pages,  breaks 
out  with  great  force.  It  seems  often  that 
his  mind  is  absorbed,  not  so  much  in  nat- 
ural objects  in  their  individuality  as  in 
natural  elements,  in  their  larger  life  of  the 
constitution,  the  whirl,  the  vast  spec- 
tacle of  nature.  Fire,  air,  earth  and  water 
are  the  four  elements  from  which  his  very 
vocabulary  seems  made  up;  flame,  wind 
and  foam,  and  all  the  forms  of  light  are  so 
much  a  part  of  his  colour-rhythm  that  they 
become  an  opaline  of  verse  peculiarly  his 

[84] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
own ;  his  mannerism  in  diction  and  style  is 
chiefly  a  thing  of  his  fascination  with 
these  elemental  phases  of  matter  and  sen- 
sation which  are  more  abstractions  of 
motion,  hue  and  luminousness  than  simple 
objects  of  sight  and  hearing.  The  blurring 
effect  of  this  mass  of  indefinable  sensation, 
especially  when  metaphorically  employed, 
even  more  than  the  overcharge  of  vocal 
sound  in  the  verse,  accounts  for  that  im- 
pression of  vacuity  of  meaning  that  Swin- 
burne's poetry  in  general  makes  on  read- 
ers not  habituated  to  his  manner.  The 
main  fact  is  that  in  the  sphere  of  natural 
imagery  his  mind  tends  constantly  to  es- 
cape from  the  limited  and  particular  ob- 
ject into  the  more  abstract  primary  ele- 
ments of  nature,  and  to  use  these  meta- 

[85] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
phorically  without  definition  to  colour  his 
verse  with  sensation  that  is  rather  emo- 
tional than  perceptive;  it  is  thus  that  he 
produces  these  effects  by  virtue  of  which 
his  poetry  is  generally  thought  to  have 
more  aflBnity  with  the  art  of  music  than 
has  been  achieved  by  other  poets.  Colour- 
tones  of  nature  have  as  much  to  do  with 
this  as  simple  sound-tones  of  rhyme,  al- 
literation and  cadence ;  all  the  senses,  and 
not  the  ear  alone,  are  occupied  with  this 
music  which  lulls  and  dazzles  the  mind 
with  a  magical  and  exquisite  pleasure. 

The  nature  poems  of  Swinburne  in  the 
precise  sense,  however,  are  many  and 
various  and  among  them  some  rise  higher 
than  others.  He  has  himself,  in  his  own  re- 
view of  his  poetic  work,  named  those  which 

[86] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
to  himself  seem  most  significant,  and  his 
own  choice  coincides  with  that  of  his  read- 
ers. He  dwells  there  upon  his  closeness 
to  the  scene  and  repeats  the  same  traits 
of  the  general  landscape  that  he  has  de- 
scribed in  verse.  No  summary  can  equal 
this  in  justice,  brevity  and  breadth.  The 
poems  he  selects  are  the  four  poems  of  the 
West  UndercHff,  "In  the  Bay,"  "On  the 
Cliffs,"  "  A  Forsaken  Garden,"  the  dedica- 
tion to  "The  Sisters,"  "Off  Shore,"  "An 
Autumn  Vision, "  "  A  Swimmer's  Dream," 
"On  the  South  Coast,"  "Neap-Tide."  It 
will  be  found  on  examination  that  primi- 
tive nature  is  at  the  heart  of  all  of  these 
poems  as  plainly  as  it  is  in  the  last  class 
he  names  —  "such  as  try  to  render  the 
effect  of  inland  or  woodland  solitude  — 

[87] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
the  splendid  oppression  of  nature  at  noon 
which  found  utterance  of  old  in  words  of 
such  singular  and  everlasting  significance 
as  panic  and  nympholepsy. "  The  terror  of 
noon  is  precisely  one  of  those  primordial 
things  the  fascination  of  which  —  not  to 
speak  of  the  wonder  of  his  merely  knowing 
it  —  stamps  Swinburne's  genius,  in  its  ap- 
proach to  nature,  with  the  aboriginal  mark 
of  the  race.  With  this  capacity  to  feel  the 
old  mood  belongs  the  general  largeness  of 
his  outlook  and  horizon,  and  through  both 
these  traits  he  comes  into  sympathy  with 
polytheistic  habitudes ;  at  that  moment  of 
noon  his  genius  hovers  between  the  Sun- 
god  in  heaven  and  Pan  on  earth  with  an 
equal  possession  of  mythologizing  mind; 
and,  in  general,  it  is  the  grand  features 

[88] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
and  glomeration  of  things  that  holds  him 
—  heaven  with  all  its  stars,  its  winds  and 
clouds;  earth  in  great  tracts  of  barren 
places  or  of  *' cliff  and  crag,  lawn  and 
woodland,  garden  and  lea;"  and  most  of 
all  the  sea. 

Swinburne's  ocean-poetry  is  the  crown 
of  his  nature  verse;  in  it  he  is  not  only 
most  exalted  and  fluent  and  vivid,  but  he 
winds  the  sea-voices  truly  into  his  song. 
He  was  the  child  of  a  sailor-race,  and  in 
his  boyhood  the  sea  was  his  open  highway 
of  dream,  imagination  and  sentiment,  of 
the  vision  that  comes  to  great  poets  in 
their  youth.  It  was  the  thing  of  nature 
most  clung  about  by  his  spirit ;  the  sun  — 
so  he  represents  it  —  had  his  adoration, 
but  the  sea  his  love.  The  sea,  too,  had 

[89] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
other  imaginative  values  to  him.  It  was  his 
nature-symbol  of  England.  The  thought  of 
England  as  the  oceanic  power  was  natural 
ever  after  the  Armada  and  the  Elizabethan 
poets,  and  in  later  days  is  supported  by 
the  imperial  dominion  spread  and  based 
in  all  directions  upon  the  waters ;  to  Swin- 
burne, the  singer  of  the  Armada  and  the 
patriot  for  whom  the  greatness  of  England 
lay  in  that  quality  of  race  of  which  her  sea 
greatness  is  the  memorial  in  time,  Eng- 
land is,  as  it  were,  the  emanation  of  the 
sea  in  humanity,  one  thing  with  it  and, 
one  may  say,  the  spiritual  form  of  it ;  so  it 
seems  to  his  eyes.  The  sea,  too,  is  his 
nature-symbol  of  liberty,  of  that  in  the 
spirit  of  all  mankind  which  is  the  greatest 
object  of  human  effort,  the  condition  and 

[90] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
the  consummation  of  greatness  in  nations 
or  men,  the  state  of  being  in  which  alone 
they  truly  are  at  all.  The  historic  associ- 
ation of  liberty  with  the  sea-races,  from 
Athens  down,  helps  in  this  idealization, 
which,  in  itself  is  natural  to  the  thoughts 
of  all  men  and  universal  in  poetry.  And 
again,  through  the  operation  of  his  own 
poetizing  revery  and  fancy  and  the  famil- 
iar growth  of  his  spirit  in  conjunction 
with  and  through  an  environment  of  sea- 
experience,  the  sea  became  in  Swinburne's 
secret  thoughts  the  nature-symbol  of  his 
own  genius,  a  thing  of  untameable  and 
primitive  nature  blending  with  the  cause 
of  liberty  and  the  glory  of  England  and  the 
universal  hope  and  life  of  mankind;  he 
thought    of    himself,    mythically,    as   the 

[91] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
child  of  the  sea,  and  he  repeatedly  praises 
a  sea-death  as  the  appropriate  end  of  such 
a  child. 

This  fancy,  which  is  more  genuine  in 
feeling  than  might  seem  possible,  is  ex- 
pressed in  many  passages  of  his  poems,  but 
it  is  the  formative  idea  in  one  distinctive 
poem,  which  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  an 
autobiographical  myth  of  the  idealizing 
sort,  such  as  Shelley's  "  Epipsychidion , " 
that  entitled  "Thalassius."  It  is  a  delicate 
and  highly-finished  work,  and  is  also  per- 
haps the  most  broadly  instructive,  the 
most  comprehensive  of  his  experience  and 
theory,  of  any  of  his  poems.  Thalas- 
sius  is  the  child  of  the  Sea  and  of  the  Sun, 
and  the  verse  relates  his  history  from 
birth  to  the  moment  of  his  perfecting  in 

[92] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
life,    under    the    symbolism    of    classical 
mythic    imagery.    He    is    educated   by    a 
foster-father,  and  fed. 

"  For  bread  with  wisdom  and  with  song  for  wine," 

after  the  antique  manner  familiar  to  us  in 
Shelley's  verse  of  Laon  and  Prince  Atha- 
nase;  the  identification  with  the  poet  is 
made  plain  in  the  details  of  this  in- 
struction : 

"  High  things  the  high  song  taught  him ; 

*^t^         «^         ^^         ^#         %^         %i^  ^^  %^         *x*  ^*         ^^  %x^         ^^ 

^^  ff*  ^fu  ^»  •^  *j»  •7*  *!*  "J*  ^f»  ffj*  •J*  ^* 

iJo-u;  /^e  </ia^  Zove*  lije  overmuch  shall  die 

The  dog's  death,  utterly  : 

And  he  that  much  less  loves  it  than  he  hates 

All  wrongdoing  that  is  done 

Anywhere  always  underneath  the  sun 

Shall  live  a  mightier  life  than  time's  or  fate's. 

[93] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

One  fairer  thing  he  shewed  him,  and  in  might 

More  strong  than  day  and  night 

Whose  strengths  build  up  time's  towering  period  : 

Yea,  one  thing  stronger  and  more  high  than  God, 

Which  if  man  had  not,  then  should  God  not  be  : 

And  that  was  Liberty. 

And  gladly  should  man  die  to  gain,  he  said. 

Freedom  ;  and  gladlier,  having  lost,  lie  dead. 

^Lf  ^f>  ^^  ^^  ^1^  4^  ^^  %^  ^X*  ^^  ^^  ^0  ^#  ^^ 

•T"       "T*        ^       'i^       "T*       ^^       ^p       "^       ^       ^p       ^p       ^*       ^       ^ 

And  hate  the  song  too  taught  him  :  hate  of  all 

That  brings  or  holds  in  thrall 

Of  spirit  or  flesh,  free-born  ere  God  began. 

The  holy  body  and  sacred  soul  of  man. 

And  wheresoever  a  curse  was  or  a  chain, 

A  throne  for  torment  or  a  crown  for  bane 

Rose,  moulded  out  of  poor  mens  molten  pain. 

There,  said  he,  should  mans  heaviest  hate  be  set 

Inexorably,  to  faint  not  or  forget 

Till  the  last  warmth  bled  forth  of  the  last  vein 

In  flesh  that  none  should  call  a  king's  again, 

[94] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Seeing  wolves  and  dogs  and  birds  that  plague- 
strike  air 
Leave  the  last  bone  of  all  the  carrion  hare. 

And  hope  the  high  song  taught  him  :   hope  whose 

eyes 
Can  sound  the  seas  unsoundahle,  the  skies 
Inaccessible  of  eyesight  ;    that  can  see 
What  earth  beholds  not,  hear  what  wind  and  sea 
Hear  not,  and  speak  what  all  these  crying  in  one 
Can  speak  not  to  the  sun. 
For  in  her  sovereign  eyelight  all  things  are 
Clear  as  the  closest  seen  and  kindlier  star 
That  marries  morn  and  even  and  winter  and  spring 
With  one  love's  golden  ring. 
For  she  can  see  the  days  of  man,  the  birth 
Of  good  and  death  of  evil  things  on  earth 
Inevitable  and  infinite,  and  sure 
As  present  pain  is,  or  herself  is  pure. 
Yea,  she  can  hear  and  see,  beyond  all  things 
Thai  lighten  from  before  Time's  thunderous  wings 

[95] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

Through  the  awful  circle  of  wheel-winged  "periods. 
The  tempest  of  the  twilight  of  all  Gods  : 
And  higher  than  all  the  circling  course  they  ran 
The  sundawn  of  the  spirit  that  was  man." 

The  body  of  the  poem  continues  with  the 
hfe  experience  of  the  hero,  and  at  the  end, 
at  the  moment  of  his  perfecting,  the  Sun- 
god  blesses  him  with  words  that  may  be 
taken  as  the  ideal  of  the  poet's  life : 

"  Child  of  my  sunlight  and  the  sea,  from  birth 
A  fosterling  and  fugitive  on  earth  ; 
Sleepless  of  soul  as  wind  or  wave  or  fire, 
A  manchild  with  an  ungrown  God's  desire  ; 
Because  thou  hast  loved  nought  mortal  more  than  me. 
Thy  father,  and  thy  mother-hearted  sea  ; 
Because  thou  hast  set  thine  heart  to  sing,  and  sold 
Life  and  life's  love  for  song,  God's  living  gold  ; 
Because  thou  hast  given  thy  flower  and  fire  of 
youth 

[96] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

To  feed  mens  hearts  with  visions,  truer  than  truth  ; 
Because  thou  hast  kept  in  those  world-wandering 

eyes 
The  light  that  makes  me  music  of  the  skies  ; 
Because  thou  hast  heard  with  world-unwearied  ears 
The  music  that  puts  light  into  the  spheres  ; 
Have  therefore  in  thine  heart  and  in  thy  mouth 
The  sound  of  song  that  mingles  north  and  south. 
The  song  of  all  the  winds  that  sing  of  me. 
And  in  thy  soul  the  sense  of  all  the  sea." 

In  this  poem  the  nature-poetry  of  Swin- 
burne finds  its  highest  and  most  beauti- 
ful ideahzation  in  human  life ;  it  is,  in  fact, 
the  crowning  work  of  his  hand,  in  so  far  as 
he  drew  his  inspiration  from  the  life  of  his 
spirit  with  nature. 

Admirable  in  portraiture  as  the  pure 
nature-poems  of  Swinburne  are,  in  their 
mere  rendering  of  scene,  atmosphere  and 

[97] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
landscape  mood,  they  gain  in  poetic  power 
in  proportion  as  the  element  of  human  life 
is  brought  into  them  in  any  form,  whether 
as  a  personal  tone  of  the  poet  or  as  inci- 
dent, memory  or  vision,  or  as  a  main  ac- 
tion. In  '*Thalassius,"  the  idealization  of 
nature  is  superfine  and  places  the  poem  in 
the  highest  rank  of  those  few  imaginative 
and  spiritualized  allegories  of  life  which 
can  appeal  deeply  only  to  a  narrow  cir- 
cle of  readers  in  any  generation,  men  who 
are  numbered  by  two's  and  three's  rather 
than  by  scores.  In  numerous  poems,  how- 
ever, Swinburne  has  blended  description 
with  autobiography  in  the  most  charming 
way,  especially  in  those  coast  poems  which 
he  has  associated  with  the  name  of  his 
friend,  Theodore  Watts-Dunton,  himself 

[98] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
a  nature-lover  with  the  primitive  bases  of 
f  eehng  in  him  belonging  to  earlier  ages  and 
a  more  earthly  generation  of  men;  and 
also,  and  peculiarly,  in  the  poems  of  swim- 
ming the  blend  of  nature  with  life  is  ac- 
complished with  a  fine  effect.  The  great 
instance  of  such  a  description  in  which 
nature  is  not  only  the  scene  but  the  giver 
of  the  action  is  the  swim  of  Tristram  in 
the  dawn  of  the  Sun  just  before  the  battle 
in  which  he  receives  his  death-wounds. 
The  passage  is  long,  and  fuller  of  pure 
natural  beauty  than  any  other  scene  in 
the  poet's  verse,  and  it  is  besides  unique  in 
literature,  sole  by  itself  in  its  saturation 
with  the  sea  and  the  dawn  and  the  joy  of 
the  swimmer,  made  one  joy  of  all;  but 
no   presentation   of   Swinburne's   nature- 

[99] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
verse  can  spare  the  concluding  lines,  with 
the  glory  of  their  physical  delight: 

"  Till  the  sweet  change  that  bids  the  sense  grow  sure 
Of  deeper  depth  and  purity  more  pure 
Wrapped  him  and  lapped  him  round  with  clearer 

cold. 
And  all  the  rippling  green  grew  royal  gold 
Between  him  and  the  far  suns  rising  rim,. 
And  like  the  sun  his  heart  rejoiced  in  him. 
And  brightened  with  a  broadening  flame  of  mirth  ; 
And  hardly  seemed  its  life  a  part  of  earthy 
But  the  life  kindled  of  a  fiery  birth 
And  passion  of  a  new-begotten  son 
Between  the  live  sea  and  the  living  sun. 
And  mightier  grew  the  joy  to  meet  full-faced 
Each  wave,  and  mount  with  upward  plunge,  and 

taste 
The  rapture  of  its  rolling  strength,  and  cross 
Its  flickering  crown  of  snows  that  flash  and  toss 
Like  plumes  in  battles^  blithest  charge,  and  thence 

[100] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 

To  watch  the  next  with  yet  more  strenuous  sense  ; 

Till  on  his  eyes  the  light  heat  hard  and  hade 

His  face  turn  west  and  shoreward  through  the  glad 

Swift  revel  of  the  waters  golden-clad 

And  back  with  light  reluctant  heart  he  bore 

Across  the  broad-backed  rollers  in  to  shore." 

Such  poetry  brings  back  that  early  world 
in  which  old  Triton  blew  his  wreathed 
horn,  and  not  in  a  vision  only,  but  as  the 
everlasting  life  of  nature  and  man. 

Swinburne  is  at  heart  a  nature-wor- 
shipper, and  it  is  through  the  symbolism 
of  nature  that  his  religious  instincts  find 
their  fullest  and  unimpeded  flow.  His 
classically  reminiscent  and  anti-Christian 
poems  alike  contain  a  literary  alloy  and 
belong  in  substance  to  scholarship,  to 
progress,  to  things  of  civilization,  to  so- 

[101] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
ciety ;  in  proportion  as  he  lays  these  things 
aside  and  reverts  in  primitive  freedom  to 
the  world  of  nature,  to  awe  of  the  sun  and 
delight  in  the  waves  and  indefinable 
moods  of  the  moors,  the  barrens  and  the 
glens,  he  recaptures  the  original  soul,  be- 
comes himself  purely,  pours  out  his  spirit 
directly,  intensely,  overflowingly,  —  he 
lives  the  poetic  life.  The  deepest  sympa- 
thies of  his  genius  are  with  force,  with 
things  of  power  everywhere,  with  the  ener- 
gies of  life.  The  truth  about  him  is  the 
exact  opposite  of  what  has  been  widely 
and  popularly  thought;  weakness,  affec- 
tation, exotic  foreignness,  the  traits  of 
sestheticism  in  the  debased  sense  of  that 
word,  are  far  from  him;  he  is  strong,  he  is 
genuine,  he  is  English,  bred  with  an  Eu- 

[102] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
ropean  mind  it  is  true  like  Shelley,  like 
Gray  and  Milton,  but  in  his  own  genius, 
temperament  and  the  paths  of  his  flight 
charged  with  the  strength  of  England.  In 
his  nature-verse  there  is  sympathy  with 
power,  grandeur,  energy,  marking  the 
verse  unmistakably  as  that  of  a  strong 
soul;  in  his  social  verse  of  all  kinds,  pohti- 
cal  and  religious,  there  is  the  same  sym- 
pathy marking  it,  making  it  clarion-like,  to 
use  his  own  metaphor,  for  liberty,  prog- 
ress, man,  for  the  truth  and  love  of  the 
Revolution,  for  the  ideal  of  the  Republic 
as  the  great  and  single  aim  of  the  race. 
In  his  passion-verse  there  is  the  same 
breath  of  the  power  of  life ;  and  that  fare- 
well to  life  in  which  the  pagan  mood  ends, 
by  its  insistency,  its  poignancy,  its  plan- 

[103] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
gency,  the  sweetness  of  its  regret,  the  bit- 
terness of  its  despair,  is  the  death-recoil  of 
a  great  power  of  Hfe,  of  joy  and  dream  and 
aspiration  in  youth,  of  a  power  to  seize  the 
things  of  nature  and  of  the  spirit,  to  Uve 
over  again  the  experience,  to  think  over 
again  the  thoughts  of  man,  to  have  man's 
Ufe.  It  belonged  to  so  strong  a  nature  and 
genius  that  the  larger  note  should  be  ever 
increasing  in  the  song,  blending  in  widening 
harmonies,  to  rest  in  the  unities  of  nature, 
of  man,  and  of  man's  hope  in  society. 

VIII 

Swinburne's  nature  poetry  has  the  added 
charm  of  affording  some  access  to  his  per- 
sonality, since  it  is  closely  connected  with 
his  habits  of  life,  his  friendships  and  the 

[104] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWLNBURNE 
loved  and  familiar  places  where  he  has 
passed  his  years.  Memory  and  compan- 
ionship have  a  large  share  in  their  inspira- 
tion, and  the  trace  of  French  and  Italian 
travel  and  of  holidays  along  English 
shores  is  a  trodden  trail  in  the  verse.  He 
will  remain  a  figure  of  the  Northumbrian 
headlands  and  the  South  Coast  forever  in 
the  imaginative  memory  of  literature; 
there  he  is  seen  in  the  verse,  alone  or  with 
a  friend,  on  horseback  or  a-foot  or  a-swim, 
in  his  habit  as  he  lived  in  his  own  country 
and  with  a  love  for  the  soil  and  the  break- 
ing sea,  his  English  birth.  Such  a  back- 
ground of  personality,  of  the  human  life  of 
a  man,  is  deeply  desired  by  a  poet's  lovers 
who  thus  reach  an  unnoticed  share  in  his 
privacy;    it  is  the  craving  and  the  due  of 

[105] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
their  gratitude  and  answers  to  his  un- 
known intimacy  with  their  own  spirits. 
A  finer  approach,  however,  is  given  by 
Swinburne  in  the  numerous  poems  which 
he  has  dedicated  to  childhood,  all  of  an 
intimate  personal  tone,  and  revealing  his 
heart  and  mood  and  speech  in  the  gen- 
tlest part  of  household  privacy,  in  his  love 
of  children.  The  verse,  as  is  usual  with 
him,  has  a  monotone,  the  permanence  and 
depth  of  an  unchangeable  emotion  that 
wells  always  from  the  same  spring;  it  is 
made  up  of  pure  affection,  repeated  over 
and  over,  of  kin  to  a  child's  kisses,  for 
which  it  calls,  to  which  it  answers  and 
through  which  it  exists,  a  delicate,  inti- 
mate, worshipping  poesy,  of  which  the  like 
in  English  is  not  to  be  found.  There  is  here 

[106] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
the  Delphic  christening  of  the  babe,  one 
after  another,  the  birthday  ode  to  the  boy 
faithful  with  each  revolving  year,  the 
death-rite  of  the  little  life  in  sad  cadences 
of  brief  refrains;  and  unique  among  even 
these  records  of  life  is  that  rosary  of  daily 
song  which  counts  the  month  of  absence 
and  gives  the  weariness  of  the  child- 
emptied  house  through  the  lengthening 
hours  of  summer  bereft  of  its  soul.  To  be 
capable  of  such  a  series  shows  the  man's 
heart  better  than  all  else  in  his  verse ;  and 
happy  was  the  boy's  head  that  drew  this 
light  to  shine  upon  it  and  flash  out  the  gold 
of  the  poet's  affection  like  sunshine  falling 
there  in  far  absence,  in  memory,  in  pres- 
ence as  the  two  heads  bent  together  over 
the  legend  and  the  picture  by  the  fire.  The 

[107] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
sense  of  the  household  is  as  intimate  and 
private  here  as  in  Cowper's  verse ;  the  house 
and  the  garden  and  the  hours  are  pure 
Enghsh;  all  is  native  to  the  soil,  the  flower- 
age,  the  home  of  England.  In  this  verse  the 
solitary  and  secluded  figure  of  the  scholarly 
poet  is  familiarly  seen  in  the  gentlest 
associations  and  the  happiest  acts  of  life. 
The  nature  of  Swinburne's  personal 
life  is  also,  though  less  plainly  and  un- 
reservedly, shown  in  the  large  number  of 
poems  addressed  to  his  companions,  on 
one  or  another  occasion,  but  naturally 
most  of  these  are  memorial  verses.  He 
has  been  "fortunate  in  friendships,"  and 
the  hold  of  love  in  them  was  strong.  The 
most  of  the  friends  to  whom  he  dedicates 
verse  are  naturally  in  the  group  of  artists 

[108] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
and  men  of  letters  with  which  his  own 
fame  is  associated,  Rossetti,  Burne- Jones, 
WilHam  Bell  Scott,  Morris,  Watts,  Mad- 
dox-Brown,  Watts-Dunton,  and  others, 
with  whom  he  found  his  principal  com- 
panionship in  literary  and  artistic  sym- 
pathy; but  the  list  includes  many  besides 
these,  distinguished  or  eminent  or  mem- 
orable for  old  association  with  Landor  or 
Shelley  or  some  other.  A  life  which 
leaves  so  rich  a  personal  memorial  of  its 
human  loves,  however  secluded,  has  won 
for  itself  or  received  by  its  own  grace  one 
of  the  true  felicities  and  happiest  rewards 
found  by  man.  Hardly  less  near  than  these 
attachments,  the  verse  discloses  the  ties, 
as  of  student  and  master,  with  Landor, 
Hugo  and  Mazzini,  which  Swinburne  re- 

[109] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
garded  as  the  highest  honour  and  greatest 
blessing  upon  his  younger  head;  and  in  a 
degree  yet  further  removed  the  verse  con- 
tinues to  show,  with  an  ever  greater  vol- 
ume and  widening  range,  his  tribute  to  the 
dead  masters  of  literature,  not  conven- 
tionally or  perfunctorily  or  affectedly,  but 
in  a  genuine  and  deeply-felt  outpouring  of 
admiration  and  gratitude  and  that  strange, 
mighty  love  that  only  the  dead  can 
arouse,  a  thing  of  the  pure  and  untram- 
melled soul.  He  was  ever  a  lover  of  heroes, 
of  great  deeds  and  famous  works ;  for  him 
the  heavens  of  fame  were  constellated 
more  with  poetic  and  spiritual  names  than 
is  the  case  with  other  men ;  he  was  faithful 
to  the  pure  fires  there  and  saw  the  eternity 
of  poetry  as  a  flame  outburning  all  others 

[110] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
ill  beauty  and  everlastingness ;  he  wor- 
shipped in  his  verse  poetry,  freedom, 
truth,  and  the  fames  that  are  indestruc- 
tible names  of  these  in  human  memory. 
"On  the  CHffs"  is  a  poem  in  which  there 
is  both  the  vision  and  the  rhapsody  of  this, 
in  very  noble  and  unusual  imaginative 
forms,  and  stands  as  the  type  of  his  mood 
toward  fame,  which  for  him  more  truly 
than  for  men  at  large  was  what  Shelley 
called  it  "love  disguised."  In  all  this  vol- 
ume of  human  appreciation,  for  the  great 
fames  of  the  past,  for  the  elder  masters 
who  touched  him  with  their  hands,  for  the 
company  of  familiar  friends  in  private  life, 
there  is  to  be  observed  the  same  strength 
of  soul,  the  same  affluence  of  response  to 
life,  the  same  capacity  for  the  passion  of 

[HI] 


ALGERNON   CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
life   in   its   largeness   which   has   already 
been  spoken  of  as  the  fundamental  thing 
in  the  poet's  nature,  but  here  seen  in  its 
noblest  phase  as  a  power  to  love. 

IX 

Liberty,  melody,  passion,  fate,  nature, 
love  and  fame  are  the  seven  chords  which 
the  poet's  hand,  from  its  first  almost  boy- 
hood touch  upon  the  lyre,  has  swept  now 
for  two  score  years  with  music  that  has 
been  blown  through  the  world.  He  sang  in 
the  lines  of  his  earliest  dedication,  in  the 
opening  lines  of  it, — 

"  The  sea  gives  her  shells  to  the  shingle. 
The  earth  gives  her  streams  to  the  sea  ; 

They  are  many,  hut  my  gift  is  single. 
My  verses,  the  first  fruits  of  me." 

[112] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
and  a  certain  singleness  has  abided  in  the 
gift  to  the  end.  He  has  been  faithful  to  his 
early  lights,  his  first  loves,  and  has  served 
the  ideal  of  his  life  with  an  unswerving 
rectitude,  a  tireless  industry  and  an  un- 
flinching courage.  He  has  been  the  lau- 
reate of  the  Republic  in  Europe  as  the 
continental  cause  of  liberty  in  every  ty- 
rannic or  partially  enfranchised  land;  he 
has  been  a  national  poet  of  England,  and 
has  besides  enriched  English  literature 
with  a  music  never  heard  before,  with  the 
most  stately  tragedies  of  his  time, and  with 
its  most  imaginative  romantic  poem  of 
passion  and  with  a  multitude  of  noble 
single  poems  of  great  variety  of  theme, 
mood  and  art.  He  has  supplemented  this 
poetic  gift  with   a  large  body  of  prose 

[113] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
which  contains  the  wealth  of  a  poet's  ap- 
preciation of  a  main  portion  of  the  most 
famous  Enghsh  Hterature  as  well  as  of  the 
greatest  modern  poetic  mind  of  France, — 
a  treasure  of  intuitive  criticism  such  as  no 
other  English  poet  has  left.  This  is  the 
fruit  of  a  long  labour  of  life.  Strength  is 
dominant  in  his  genius;  the  things  of 
strength  are  in  his  verse ;  it  is  English  gen- 
ius and  English  strength,  racial  in  lyric 
power,  in  free  intellect,  in  bold  speech, — 
none  more  so  —  and  English  also  in  its 
poetic  scholarly  tradition.  The  reversionary 
tendency  of  his  art,  the  imaginative  re- 
moteness of  his  themes,  the  primitive  pre- 
dilection of  his  temperament  have  been 
pointed  out,  with  the  resulting  detachment 
of  his  genius  in  important  ways  from  his 

[114] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
own  age  and  generation;  but  if  a  certain 
aloofness  has  come  into  his  work  from 
these  causes,  he  has  been  thereby  with- 
drawn into  what  is  most  primary  in  art 
and  most  elemental  in  nature  and  life.  He 
has  been  genuine,  as  only  high  genius  can 
be,  in  all  that  he  has  done.  In  private  life 
he  has  lived  in  seclusion;  but  he  has  been 
one  of  a  company  of  sympathetic  friends, 
and  has  besides  numbered  among  his 
companions  many  others  of  the  men  of 
distinction  of  his  times.  He  has  never 
failed  in  public  sympathy  with  great  oc- 
casions and  events.  As  a  poet,  notwith- 
standing his  genius  and  labour,  it  must  be 
said  he  found  the  world  inhospitable.  The 
measure  of  praise  that  he  won  has  gone  no 
further  than  the  acknowledgment  of  the 

[115] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
victory  of  a  poetic  power  that  could  not  be 
denied;  it  has  not  much  increased  with 
years;  it  has  never  been  adequate,  just  or 
intelHgent.  There  is,  perhaps,  the  con- 
sciousness of  this  in  the  concluding  words 
of  his  remarks  on  his  collected  verse, 
which  he  addresses  to  his  friend  and 
house- mate  through  these  latter  years: 
"It  is  nothing  to  me  that  what  I  write 
should  find  immediate  or  general  accep- 
tance; it  is  much  to  know  that,  on  the 
whole,  it  has  won  for  me  the  right  to  ad- 
dress this  dedication  and  inscribe  this 
edition  to  you."  The  poet,  like  all  men  of 
simple  greatness,  is  free,  it  would  seem, 
from  the  desire  for  applause,  but  not  from 
the  human  want  of  some  loving  comrade- 
ship in  his  art.  There  are,  in  the  wide 

[116] 


ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 
world,  here  and  there  a  few  —  a  number 
that  will  increase  ever  with  passing  gener- 
ations and  is  even  now  perhaps  manyfold 
greater  than  the  poet  knows  —  in  whose 
hearts  his  poetry  is  lodged  with  power. 

THE  END 


THE  MoCLURE  PRESS,   NEW   YORK 


[117] 


CONTEMPORARY  MEN  OF  LETTERS  SERIES 
WILLIAM  ASPENWALL  BRADLEY,  EDITOR 


The  purpose  of  this  series  is  to  provide  brief  but  compre- 
hensive sketches,  biographical  and  critical,  of  living  writers 
and  of  those  who,  though  dead,  may  still  properly  be  re- 
garded as  belonging  to  our  time.  There  is  a  legitimate 
interest  in  the  lives  of  our  contemporaries  that  is  quite  dis- 
tinct from  mere  personal  curiosity.  There  is  also,  in  spite 
of  the  obvious  limitations  of  contemporary  criticism,  a 
justifiable  ambition  to  arrive  at  some  final  estimate  of  the 
literary  production  of  our  age  in  advance  of  posterity.  It 
is  to  satisfy  so  far  as  possible  this  ambition  and  this  interest 
that  the  present  series  is  planned.  European  as  well  as 
English  and  American  men  of  letters  are  included,  so  as  to 
give  a  complete  survey  of  the  intellectual  and  artistic  life  of 
an  age  that  is  characteristically  cosmopolitan.  It  is  also 
often  called  a  decadent  age,  and  it  has  therefore  a  varird 
outlook  on  life.  The  diverse  and  often  conflicting  points  of 
view  that  we  thus  meet  with  in  modern  poets  and  prose 
writers  are  all  treated  intelligently  and  sympathetically  by 
writers  especially  qualified  in  every  instance,  although  the 
prevailing  temper  of  the  series  is  idealistic. 

McCLURE,  PHILLIPS  &  CO., 


IN  THE  SAME  SERIES 

WILLIMi  BUTLER  YEATS  AND  THE   IRISH 
LITERARY  REVIVAL 

BY  HORATIO  SHEAFE  KRANS 

INCLUDING   A   BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  MR.  YEATS'  PUBLISHED  WORK. 

"A  very  timely  and  very  satisfactory  little  volume." 

Hartford  Courant. 

"A  bright  and  interesting  little  study."     St.  Paul  Despatch. 

"Admirable  addition  to  an  admirable  series." 

Brooklyn  Times. 

"A  study  of  critical  insight  and  genuine  appreciation." 

Denver,  Col.  News-Times. 

"An  excellent  appreciation  of  Mr.  Yeats,  and  a  good  intro- 
duction to  the  more  popular  selections  of  old  Irish  literature." 

Salt  Lake  City  Tribune. 

"  Of  Mr.  Krans'  criticism  of  Mr.  Yeats'  work,  his  ideas, 
his  attitude  toward  life  and  its  problems,  it  would  be  diflBcult 
to  speak  in  too  high  praise."     Christian  Work  &  Evangelist. 

"A  safe  guide  for  one  embarking  on  a  course  of  Mr.  Yeats, 
and  it  is  full  of  well-chosen  quotations  from  the  poems  that 
have  been  inspired  in  the  last  decade  by  the  return  to  imagina- 
tion which  is  the  aim  of  the  Irish  poet  and  his  friends." 

N.  Y.  Eve.  Post. 

"The  book  will  serve  as  a  guide  to  be  relied  upon  in  taking 
the  neophyte  straight  to  the  heart  of  the  movement;  to  those 
who  are  already  pledged  and  devoted  to  Mr.  Yeats  as  a  vital — 
some  say  the  most  \dtal — force  in  contemporary  English  litera- 
ture, the  book  will  appeal  as  an  admirable  appreciation  of  his 
work,  done  by  one  like-minded  with  themselves."     The  Dial. 


IN  THE  SAME  SERIES 

CHARI.es   DUDLEY  WARNER 

BY  MRS.  JAMES  T.  FIELDS 

WIFE  OF  Warner's  first  publisher;  coNTAEvrNG  a  HiTHBat- 

TO   UNPUBLISHED   CORRESPONDENCE   BETWEEN   Mli. 
WARNER   AND   MR.  W.  D.  HOWELL9. 

"A  brief  book,  but  it  is  pure  gold."     Burlington  Post. 

"A  singularly  satisfactory  estimate."     Newark  News. 

"  Wanned  throughout  by  a  sentiment  of  intimate  apprecia- 
tion."   N.  Y.  Nation. 

"An  appreciative  and  sympathetic  tribute  to  a  most  genial 
man  and  author."     Critic,  N.  Y. 

"A  pleasant  sketch  of  a  man  well  worth  knowing  and  is 
written  in  a  spirit  of  loving  appreciation."   Los  Angeles  Times. 

"A  respectful  tribute  to  one  of  the  most  graceful  of  our 
essayists,  one  of  the  finest  examples  of  the  best  American  citi- 
zenship, and  of  the  kindest  of  men."     Chicago  Eve.  Post. 

"  She  (Mrs.  Fields)  tells  the  story  of  his  youth  charmingly, 
and  her  little  biography  is  all  the  better  for  being  the  work  of 
a  life-long  and  intimate  friend."     N.Y.  Times. 

"  Mrs.  Fields  has  succeeded  in  recalling  the  charm  of  Mr. 
Warner's  manner,  his  delightful  humor,  the  elementary  quality 
of  boyishness  which  made  him  so  attractive  a  companion,  and 
which  also  made  him  one  of  the  most  effective  teachers  of  his 
generation."    A'^   Y.  Outlook. 

"  The  American  people  owe  much  to  this  sweet  and  genial 
spirit,  as  lovable  as  Stevenson,  as  gentle  as  Charles  Lamb,  and 
as  quaintly  humorous  as  both  with  a  whimsical  earnestness 
entirely  his  own;  and  this  little  volume  will  be  an  excellent 
method  by  which  they  may  learn  to  realize  their  indebted- 
ness."    Pittsburg  Post. 


PRESS  COMMENTS  ON  THE  SERIES 

"Promises  to  be  a  useful  as  well  as  a  beautiful  series. 
.     The  publishers  who  have  put  it  forth  have  done 
notably  good  work  in  bookmaking  of  late  and  these  vol- 
umes    .     .     .     are  fitted  to  adorn  any  shelves." 

Providence  Journal 

"  In  typographical  make-up  these  volumes  far  excel  the 
other  literary  monographs  on  the  market." 

Philadelphia  Press. 

"  The  volumes  are  made  up  with  all  the  taste  which  dis- 
tinguishes the  books  that  come  from  their  publisher  and 
promise  well."     The  Independent. 

'*  Begins  not  only  well  but  brilliantly.  Its  future  issues 
will  receive  close  attention,  thanks  to  the  sterling  qualities 
of  its  first  two  issues."     N.  Y.  Mail  and  Express. 

"  These  handy  volumes  are  just  the  thing  for  busy  people 
who  like  to  know  something  about  the  men  of  letters  of  the 
passing  generation."     Church  Standard. 

"  A  wide  circle  of  readers  will  be  grateful  for  this  new 
biographical  series.  From  the  quality  ...  of  these 
initial  volumes  it  is  safe  to  predict  that  this  series  will  take 
rank  with  the  English  Men  of  Letters  Series  end  the  Amer- 
ican Men  of  Letters  Series.  Readers  constantly  feel  the 
need  of  just  such  compact  and  yet  readable  biographies, 
and  of  a  thin  volume  print,  and  in  undertaking  this  series 
the  publishers  are  rendering  a  service  of  distinct  value  to  all 
readers  interested  in  things  literary."    Journal  of  Pedagogy. 


IN   PREPARATION 

GEORGE     MEREDITH 
By  G.  K.  CHESTERTON 

AUTHOR  OF  *'  ROBERT  BROWNING,  '   "  HEREllC,"  ETC. 


IJ.fi.SOUTHERN  REGIOMAL  I IRRARV  fa 


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AA    000  602  397 


